Palestinian Pundit

بروفيسور عبد الستار قاسم

"أُشبعت المبادرة العربية تحليلا عام 2002، وقد أجمع الكتاب والمحللون القوميون والإسلاميون على أن المبادرة تجسد خيانة الأنظمة العربية التي امتدت على عشرات السنوات وقبل قيام إسرائيل. لكن يبدو أن الكثير من الناس ينسون، أو أن ذاكرتهم لا تتسع للكثير من المعلومات. أما وسائل الإعلام فغالبا ما تجري وراء الخبر دون البحث عن الحقيقة، وهي تعجز إلى حد كبير عن ربط الحاضر بالماضي، وبعضها يتعمد تزوير الحقائق أو إخفاءها.

يظن كثير من الناس الآن أن الحكام العرب عبارة عن أبطال يتمسكون بحق العودة، وأنهم لن يكترثوا لضغوط إسرائيل وأمريكا، وسيصرون على النص الحرفي للمبادرة العربية. ويظن فلسطينيون أن هذه المبادرة تتوافق مع المواقف الوطنية الفلسطينية المتمسكة بالحقوق الفلسطينية. وتعزز وسائل الإعلام هذه الظنون من خلال إبراز الاستقلالية العربية في اتخاذ القرار أعيد هنا إلى الذاكرة بعض فقرات المبادرة العربية بخاصة فيما يتعلق بحق العودة:

وانطلاقا من اقتناع الدول العربية بأن الحل العسكري للنزاع لم يحقق السلام أو الأمن لأي من الإطراف:

1- يطلب المجلس من إسرائيل إعادة النظر في سياساتها وان تجنح للسلم معلنة أن السلام العادل هو خيارها الاستراتيجي أيضا

2- كما يطالبها القيام بما يلي :-

أ - الانسحاب الكامل من الأراضي العربية المحتلة بما في ذلك الجولان السوري وحتى خط الرابع من يونيو (حزيران) 1967 والأراضي التي مازالت محتلة في جنوب لبنان.

ب- التوصل إلى حل عادل لمشكلة اللاجئين الفلسطينيين يتفق عليه وفقا لقرار الجمعية العامة للأمم المتحدة رقم 194.

ج- قبول قيام دولة فلسطينية مستقلة ذات سيادة على الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة منذ الرابع من يونيو 1967 في الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة وتكون عاصمتها القدس الشرقية .

3-عندئذ تقوم الدول العربية بما يلي :

أ - اعتبار النزاع العربي الإسرائيلي منتهيا والدخول في اتفاقية سلام بينها وبين إسرائيل مع تحقيق الأمن لجميع دول المنطقة .

ب- إنشاء علاقات طبيعية مع إسرائيل في إطار هذا السلام الشامل .

4- ضمان رفض كل أشكال التوطين الفلسطيني الذي يتنافى والوضع الخاص في البلدان العربية المضيفة .

5- يدعو المجلس حكومة إسرائيل والإسرائيليين جميعا إلى قبول هذه المبادرة المبينة أعلاه حماية لفرص السلام وحقنا للدماء بما يمكن الدول العربية وإسرائيل من العيش في سلام جنبا إلى جنب ويوفر للاجيال القادمة مستقبلا آمنا يسوده الرخاء والاستقرار .

إذا تفحصنا البند (2 ب) الخاص باللاجئين نجد أنه لا ينص على حق العودة، وهو بند ينم عن خبث الحكام العرب في القفز عن حق العودة. يضع النص أولا العبارة المذكورة في قرار مجلس الأمن 242، يفتح المجال للتفاوض من خلال عبارة "يتفق عليه"، ثم يضيف القرار 194. الذي يصر على حق العودة يقول: "يجب تطبيق القرار 194 الصادر عن الجمعية العامة للأمم المتحدة". أما البند الرابع فواضح فيه أن الحكام العرب يؤيدون التوطين. إذا دقق القارئ في النص يجد أن شكل التوطين المرفوض هو فقط التوطين في لبنان. أما التوطين الذي لا يتنافى والوضع الخاص للبلد المضيف فليس مرفوضا. قطعا، من صاغ هذا البند غارق في لجج الخيانة والتآمر على الفلسطينيين.

هذه النعومة الأمريكية الإسرائيلية الظاهرة الآن في التعامل مع المبادرة العربية تهدف فقط إلى تحسين صورة الزعماء العرب أمام شعوبهم. تحاول هذه النعومة تحويل القادة العرب إلى قادة غيورين وحريصين على مصلحة الأمة. لقد شهدنا هذا التلميع للزعماء العرب عام 1990/1991 تمهيدا للهجوم على الجيش العراقي في الكويت، وعام 1880/1881 تمهيدا للحرب العربية-الإيرانية. تعمل أمريكا على تحسين صورة القادة العرب في كل مرة تريد استخدامهم أو استخدام الأراضي العربية لخوض معاركها الخاصة.

غدا ستنطلق الطائرات الإسرائيلية والأمريكية من المطارات العسكرية العربية لتقصف إيران، ولا بد من استباق الأمور خوفا من رد فعل شعبي سلبي ضد المشاركة العربية في الهجوم على إيران. تحسين صورة هؤلاء القادة يخدم هذا الغرض.

هذا ولم تقل لنا الآنسة كوندو ماذا ستفعل بخريطة الطريق إذا كانت ستتبنى المبادرة العربية كأداة للدبلوماسية النشطة."

"Fatah has established a new security apparatus in the Gaza Strip and is recruiting thousands of militants in preparation for another round of violent clashes with Hamas. So far the organization - known as the Special Force - has recruited 1,400 combatants, a thousand of which have undergone military training.

Fatah intends to recruit an addition of at least 1,000 men to the organization, loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The organization is headed by Sami Abu Samhadana, a notable operative in the first intifada.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the new recruitment effort was initiated some six weeks ago. According to the sources, officers from Palestinian General Intelligence service and the National Security Force were assigned to the ranks of the new organization......

Abu Samhadana was appointed commander of the Special Force several years ago, but it was only recently decided to transform his relatively insignificant organization into a new major apparatus loyal only to Fatah and Abbas. Abu Samhadana is nonetheless considered an ally of Mohammed Dahlan, head of the Palestinian National Security Council and aide to Abbas.....

Palestinian sources say some 350 combatants from the Special Force were sent to Egypt at the beginning of March to participate in a training course under the tutelage of officers from the Palestinian Authority and Egyptian army.

The combatants of the Special Force training in Egypt were joined by several hundred soldiers of the Presidential Guard. Other soldiers of the Guard are currently training within the PA, in Gaza and in Jericho, where 500 new Presidential Guard recruits have only recently completed their training program......

Sources add that Hamas is well aware of the mass recruiting and training in organizations loyal to Fatah, and that senior Hamas figures are pressing to militarily engage Fatah as soon as possible. They fear Dahlan and Abbas' military force would greatly surpass Hamas' forces in several months' time, the sources explain.....

During the visit to the region of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Middle East envoy, David Welsh, Abbas demanded that Israel allow the transfer of weapons to Fatah forces. The request was made both to Israel and to the Americans, but was rejected by both parties....."

by Ramzy Baroud

Global Research, March 31, 2007

"......I spoke exactly of that: it’s the same war, the same occupation; Israel and its neoconservative benefactors are recurring faces in the Middle East’s ongoing chaos. That is a fact that anti-war movements everywhere must keep at the forefront if they want their message to have validity or relevance.

The Israeli connection to the political ‘realignments’ in the region goes back as early as 1992. The draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), which was circulated around the Pentagon for weeks before being ‘leaked’ to the New York Times, envisaged a future in which the US establishes uncontested supremacy in the post cold-war world. Though the guidance didn’t underscore Israel and its role in that new world, those who composed the document were primarily the well known Israel crowd in Washington: then-Defense Department staffers Ewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and America’s man in Iraq a few years later, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Israel’s role in that ‘vision’ didn’t crystallise fully until Richard Pearle, a leading neocon, along with Douglas Feith and others, proposed “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” to Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The policy document envisaged a larger role for Israel in the region that would equate its influence to that of the US, not a mere client state but an equal hegemon. It plotted for the toppling of the Iraqi regime and the re-drawing of the geopolitical map of the entire region. The same recommendations were marketed to the Clinton administration in 1997/98 but failed; Clinton, who conceded much of America’s interests to Israel’s, was, perhaps, not yet ready to accommodate such a grand vision.

That vision, an Israeli one to the core, was often presented as exclusively American, most notably by the Project for the New American Century, established by leading neocons in 1997, the same individuals who vowed allegiance to Israel for many years. PNAC was the key group behind the war in Iraq. The moment terrorists struck the Twin Towers with their deadly airplanes, PNAC campaigners were ready with a map of the Middle East, pointing out the countries they wished to bomb and the regimes that needed to be changed......

The US will leave Iraq; that should hardly be questioned. It cannot possibly bear such financial and material losses indefinitely. The New Statesman reports that caring for the war wounded alone will cost the country $2.5 trillion in the next few decades. But to ensure that such military chaos, such awesome losses of irreplaceable lives on all sides are not repeated, one must not speak of the Iraq war in too general terms: empire, oil and hegemony, and lose sight of most relevant specifics. Israel and its benefactors have played and continue to play a major role in all of this. Ignoring this fact for the sake of not ‘mixing’ the issues would simply mean fighting the right cause with the wrong strategy, to say the least."

"Jordan's King Abdullah II on Saturday urged Germany, as holder of the European Union presidency, to play the "hoped-for role" in efforts aimed at advancing the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to an official statement.

The monarch made the remarks during talks with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, where she arrived earlier Saturday at the outset of a regional tour.

"King Abdullah underscored the importance of Germany playing the hoped-for role in efforts aimed at building upon the momentum that emerged from the Arab summit conference with a view to moving the Middle East peace process out of the present deadlock," a royal court statement said."

Palestinian Hope Held Hostage:
Economic Sanctions are Keeping Palestinians From Building a Life.

by Salam Fayyad

"......The government came together after a bad year for the struggling Palestinian Authority. Our economic difficulties grew much worse during that period, in the aftermath of a free and fair election that brought Hamas to power. Because Hamas’ political platform did not conform to key elements of the peace process, including Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist and a commitment to renounce violence, the international community imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

Although much of the discussion leading to the formation of the unity government has focused on these two commitments, their validity should not have been much in question. After all, these commitments were made by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, in a crystal-clear and binding agreement in 1993, and no Palestinian government has the authority to revoke them. In fact, the unity government’s platform explicitly states that it will honor all PLO agreements, which, to be sure, include these two commitments.

As someone who has long worked for peace and reconciliation with Israel — a peace based on mutual recognition of each people’s rights — I have always subscribed to the PLO’s political program and all the commitments it embodies, including the recognition of Israel’s right to exist and the renunciation of violence. I still do......

We do not aspire to be a beggar nation [The Oslo agreement, which Fayyad still supports, had this as one of its goals: to make the Palestinians totally dependent on European charity and the Israeli economy. Hence, you do not need to aspire, Mr. "finance minister," you are already a beggar non-nation. Enjoy your status as an Indian chief on the reservation.], dependent on the world to feed our people. We have the capacity, education and talent to build a thriving economy and a strong democracy. But we cannot do so while Israel seals our borders and withholds tax revenue it owes us, or while U.S. banking regulations prevent banks from handling government business......."

"......Consider last summer’s conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s irresponsible use of cluster bombs in and around civilian areas in southern Lebanon has been widely documented and condemned. Israel bought the majority of these weapons from the United States. Demining groups estimate that they contained some 2.6 million to 4 million bomblets, around 90 percent of which were fired during the last 72 hours of the conflict. As of February 14, 2007, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) in South Lebanon had identified 847 cluster bomb strike locations, contaminating a total of 34 million square meters of land. Since a UN-brokered ceasefire went into effect on August 14, UNMACC has reported 216 civilian and demining casualties in southern Lebanon –30 deaths and 186 injuries.


The disproportionate number of civilian casualties resulting from cluster bombs used during Israel’s war with Hezbollah prompted the State Department to investigate the use of U.S.-made weapons in the conflict. Subsequently, in January 2007 the State Department notified Congress in a classified report that Israel may have violated end use agreements when it used the U.S.-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. Yet while the State Department’s Country Report on Lebanon acknowledges the aftermath of Israeli cluster bomb strikes, any mention in the report of the U.S. role in providing Israel with these weapons is glaringly absent.......

The humanitarian suffering that continues in Lebanon and numerous other countries plagued by the lasting effects of cluster munitions should compel governments to examine the military utility of cluster bombs. Trends in warfare show a shift from war-fighting against symmetrical forces on open terrain to asymmetrical fighting in civilian areas. The wide dispersal pattern of bomblets makes avoiding civilian casualties when the weapons are fired on populated areas nearly impossible. A 2003 “lessons learned” report by a U.S. Army Infantry Division labeled its cluster munitions as “losers” and suggested they were “a Cold War relic.” This report also noted that cluster munitions were “not for use in urban areas.”.....

Thankfully, the international community is taking action. In an historic step forward, Norway hosted the Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions in late February 2007, where 49 countries met to discuss how to address the indiscriminate and lasting effects of cluster munitions on civilians. At the conference, 46 countries agreed to a landmark declaration detailing their goal to conclude by 2008 a legally binding treaty prohibiting the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Half of the world’s 34 producer countries, one-third of the world’s stockpiling countries, six users or former users, and six affected states signed the Oslo declaration. Countries will meet again to determine the details of the treaty in Lima, Vienna, and Dublin over the next two years. The Bush administration did not send a representative to the Oslo meeting and, absent a policy change, is unlikely to participate in subsequent meetings......"

(Click on maps to enlarge)

by Sonja Karkar
Women for Palestine

"For Palestinians, theirs is not the land of conquest, but the land of their roots going back to time immemorial. Such a lineage does not rely on a biblical promise like the Jewish claim that God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, and is therefore, the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel. It belongs to the people of Palestine by the simple fact of their continuous residence repeated through birth and possession going back to the earliest Canaanites and even those people living there before recorded history. They were there when the Israelites invaded the land, occupied it, and held it intermittently as wave after wave of other conquerors came and went, and they were still there when the Romans put an end to Jewish Palestine by destroying Jerusalem in 135AD......

Around 170,000 Palestinians remained in what became Israel, the largest number of whom resided in the Galilee area, originally a designated part of the Arab state under the Partition Plan. These Palestinians also became the victims of Israel’s land grab policy. Over 438,000 acres, which was more than the total Jewish land holdings at the time, were confiscated and a further 400,000 acres were marked for confiscation. After Israel won the 1967 war, the total territory of Palestine came under Israel’s rule. It annexed East Jerusalem, despite the Holy City’s internationally recognised status and began implementing its Jewish settlement program with a vengeance. The Palestinians in Israel were increasingly aware of their precarious position politically and declared a national strike, known as “Land Day” on 30 March 1976 against Israel’s continuing ruthless land expropriation. An affinity was quickly felt between Palestinians everywhere and “Land Day” was adopted as a sort of national Palestinian day which is commemorated by Palestinians and their supporters around the world each year. This awakening of national consciousness had an unequivocal political message: end the occupation and allow self-determination of the Palestinians in a sovereign state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Thirty-one years later, the message is till resonating, but the Palestinians are further away from seeing a solution than ever before. Daily, Israel is taking a bit of land here and a bit of land there, to make all of Palestine “Israel’s Land”. The problem then will be, what to do with 5 million Palestinians with no land? There are only a few possible, but criminal solutions - transfer, collective imprisonment, apartheid, and/or ethnic cleansing. Alternatively, Israel can disengage from the West Bank to the 1967 borders or agree on a single, democratic state for all. Without a just solution, the struggle for Palestine’s land will continue. "

Civilian deaths mount in Mogadishu

Earlier on Friday, armed groups shot down an Ethiopian helicopter [Reuters]

"Violence has continued in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, for a third day, in what the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called "the worst fighting in more than 15 years".

Corpses lay in the streets on Saturday, as ongoing fighting and mortar fire made it difficult to retrieve bodies or tally the dead.

Residents said hundreds were believed to have been killed across the city of one million people.

"We don't know where to go. We are trapped in our houses and dead bodies are lying in the street," AFP reported Ibrahim Duale, a resident in the southern Ali Kamin area, as saying.

"There is no chance of taking the wounded and dead people because of the heavy artillery and anti-aircraft weapons," he said.

Salado Yebarow, another Mogadishu resident, was reported by Reuters as saying: "I have been here 16 years and never seen anything like this.

"The whole city is being shelled indiscriminately," she said.......

Meanwhile, on Saturday, an international rights organisation has accused the governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the US of secretly detaining hundreds of people fleeing the conflict in Somalia.

"Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director for Human Rights Watch (HRW).

"Dozens of people have effectively disappeared into Ethiopian detention facilities," said Gagnon. "It's imperative that the Ethiopians acknowledge the people they are holding and permit independent international access to them.""

***

It was noticeable that during their summit a few days ago, the Arab puppets did not say one word about Somalia. These were the instructions of their master, Condoleezza Rice, since the U.S. with its Ethiopian stooges is responsible for this latest invasion and occupation of yet another Arab country.

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

The treatment of Faye Turney is wrong - but not in the same league as British and US abuses

Ronan Bennett
Friday March 30, 2007
The Guardian

"......But the outrage expressed by ministers and leader writers is curious given the recent record of the "coalition of the willing" on the way it deals with prisoners.

Turney may have been "forced to wear the hijab", as the Daily Mail noted with fury, but so far as we know she has not been forced into an orange jumpsuit. Her comrades have not been shackled, blindfolded, forced into excruciating physical contortions for long periods, or denied liquids and food. As far as we know they have not had the Bible spat on, torn up or urinated on in front of their faces. They have not had electrodes attached to their genitals or been set on by attack dogs.

They have not been hung from a forklift truck and photographed for the amusement of their captors. They have not been pictured naked and smeared in their own excrement. They have not been bundled into a CIA-chartered plane and secretly "rendered" to a basement prison in a country where torturers are experienced and free to do their worst.

As far as we know, Turney and her comrades are not being "worked hard", the euphemism coined by one senior British army officer for the abuse of prisoners at Camp Bread Basket. And as far as we know all 15 are alive and well, which is more than can be said for Baha Mousa, the hotel receptionist who, in 2003, was unfortunate enough to have been taken into custody by British troops in Basra. There has of course been a court martial and it exonerated the soldiers of Mousa's murder. So we can only assume that his death - by beating - was self-inflicted; yet another instance of "asymmetrical warfare", the description given by US authorities to the deaths of the Guantánamo detainees who hanged themselves last year.

And while the families of the captured marines and sailors must be in agonies of uncertainty, they have the comfort of knowing that the very highest in the land are doing everything they can to end their "unjustified detention". They can count themselves especially lucky, for the very same highest of the land have rather different views on what justifies detention where foreign-born Muslims in Britain are concerned. In the case, for example, of the Belmarsh detainees, suspicion justified arrest; statements extracted under torture from third parties justified accusation; and secret hearings justified imprisonment......"

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

A Great Comment

Terry Jones
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

"I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq."

REUTERS

"MANAMA • The US Navy said yesterday it had ordered an aircraft carrier to the Gulf to replace one of two patrolling the region, as the United States winds down naval war games on Iran’s doorstep.

The Nimitz carrier strike group will sail from San Diego for the Gulf on Monday, a navy spokesman said, to replace the Dwight D Eisenhower, as tensions mount between Iran and the West over captured British troops and Iran’s nuclear programme.

“She (the Nimitz) will be deployed to the Gulf region. She is the relief for Eisenhower, who leaves and she replaces her,” Lieutenant Commander Jeff Davis said by telephone from Naval Headquarters in Washington.

Strike groups typically include four or five frigates and destroyers and a submarine.

“You are looking at the early part of May that you would have the transition. It would be without any overlap. There is no plan to overlap them at all,” he added.

The Eisenhower and fellow carrier John C Stennis took part in this week’s US war games, the largest in Gulf waters since 2003, when the US led an invasion of Iraq.

The drills, which included anti-submarine, anti-surface and mine warfare drills, ended yesterday. For the first time since the Iraq invasion four years ago, two US aircraft carriers were deployed in the Gulf.

Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Charlie Brown said there were currently no plans for more. “We do not expect to have three carriers in the Gulf region ... but we cannot talk about future needs or future operations,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the US not to aggravate tensions with Iran with its naval presence in the Gulf......"

***

Here is my take:

The Pentagon, as usual, is lying. There will be an overlap and the U.S. is continuing the buildup in preparation for the attack on Iran. After the arrival of the Nimitz, all three carrier groups will be in the gulf. It makes no sense to replace the Eisenhower carrier group right after it took part in the largest war games since the invasion of Iraq. All that training down the drain? It does not make sense.

The attack on Iran will trigger far stronger reaction from Iran than that from Iraq in 2003. The Iraqi military was already downgraded even before the invasion. Iran is different and that is why you need a third carrier group. Of course no one knows the timing of the upcoming attack, but based on this information (assuming that it is not disinformation) it seems that it has been pushed back to early May.

The other possibility is that the attack is straight ahead, as some Russian experts claim. They predict the first week of April to be the likely window for the attack. But then why not have the Nimitz in place, just in case you need it?

The Arab "Peace Initiative"
By Naser Jafari

"Jenin - Ma'an – The Al Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, announced responsibility for the burning of an Israeli hummer near Az Zababida, south of Jenin, in the West Bank, on Friday at midnight.

A source from the brigades informed Ma'an "an Israeli patrol was driving away from Al Kufeir area near Az Zababida when a group of brigades activists threw several Molotov cocktails at it and set it alight."

The source added that the Israeli soldiers left the jeep but said that the ammunition in it exploded. Eyewitnesses told Ma'an's reporter that they saw the jeep ablaze.

Israeli sources said that an Israeli soldier was slightly injured and that the jeep was partially destroyed by the fire."

Habila is back in Gaza, but don't expect him near the sewage tsunami devastated village....
He is still wearing the decal from the summit on his suit's lapel; he is obviously so proud of it

Khody Akhavi, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2007

"WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described "pro-Israel" groups, according to an IPS investigation.

Abbreviated versions and segments of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film's connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

HonestReporting marketed Obsession but denies it produced or funded the project.

"We initially gave some guidance to the Obsession staff," wrote Pesach Bensen, editor of Mediabackspin.com, the organisation's weblog, in an email response to IPS. "We're thrilled to see it succeed beyond our wildest expectations."

When Obsession was released last year, news pundits and anchors on FOX and CNN praised the independent film for its candid look at Islamic militancy. FOX incorporated footage from the film into a one-hour special, which aired seven times in November 2006. CNN's right-wing pundit Glen Beck called it "one of the most important films of our time". Sean Hannity of FOX News described it as "shocking beyond belief".

While such enthusiasm from right-wing talk show personalities comes as no surprise, mainstream cable news programmes also appeared to accept, without question, the premise of the film, which explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s......

HonestReporting was founded in 2000 by British university students who objected to what they considered anti-Israel coverage by European media in response to the second Palestinian intifada.

There is no mention of HonestReporting's connection to Obsession on the film's website, www.obsessionthemovie.com. In an online "Ask the Filmmakers" segment on the FOX News website, Shore stated that he could not identify the film's funders for fear of retaliation by the "radicals" the filmmakers exposed.....

According to the New York Times, when a Middle East discussion group organised a screening at New York University earlier this year, distributors of the film required those in attendance to register at IsraelActivism.com, the official website of the Hasbara fellowships.

The programme, also known as the Jerusalem fellowships, was started in 2001 by Aish Hatorah -- an Orthodox Jewish outreach organisation and yeshiva based in East Jerusalem -- in conjunction with Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to its website, the group "educates and trains university students to be effective pro-Israel activists on their campuses" by providing its participants with "tools, resources and confidence to return to their campuses as leaders in the fight for Israel's image."

Aish Hatorah helped found HonestReporting. Rabbi Ephraim Shore, the president of HonestReporting, also helped found Hasbara....."

Renowned Psychologist Philip Zimbardo On his Landmark Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib and More

Contributed by Datta

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford Prison Experiment in which 24 college students were randomly assigned the roles of prison guards and prisoners at a makeshift jail on campus. The experiment was scheduled to run for two weeks. By Day Two, the guards were going far beyond just keeping the prisoners behind bars. In scenes eerily similar to Abu Ghraib, prisoners were stripped naked, bags put on their heads and sexually humiliated. The two-week experiment had to be canceled after just six days. Zimbardo tells the full story of the landmark study in his new book, "The Lucifer Effect."

As the United States enters the fifth year of its occupation of Iraq, some of the most enduring images of the war remain the vivid photographs of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The pictures were leaked to the press and first revealed to the world in May 2004. Images showed Iraqis with bags over their heads, beaten, set upon by dogs and forced into sexually humiliating acts. The Bush administration tried to paint the scandal as an isolated incident committed by rogue soldiers. But who is really to blame for the abuses at Abu Ghraib? The answer may lie in a landmark study conducted more than three decades ago.

In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo created an experiment at Stanford University in which 24 male college students were randomly assigned the roles of prison guards and prisoners at a makeshift jail on campus. The experiment was scheduled to run for two weeks. By Day Two, the guards were going far beyond keeping the prisoners behind bars. In scenes eerily similar to Abu Ghraib, prisoners were stripped naked, bags put on their heads and sexually humiliated. The guards had become dangerously sadistic and the prisoners were breaking down emotionally. The two-week experiment had to be canceled after just six days.

Professor Philip Zimbardo has just written a new book that, for the first time, tells the full story of the famed Stanford Prison Experiment. It's called "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil." Professor Zimbardo joins me today from our firehouse studio in New York......"

Click Here to Watch, Listen or Read Transcript of This Very Interesting and Revealing Segment

FALLUJAH, Mar 30 (IPS) - Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.

By Ali al-Fadhily
Inter Press Service

"......U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces working with them are also executing people seized during home raids and other operations, residents say.

"Seventeen young men were found executed after they were arrested by U.S. troops and Fallujah police," 40-year-old Yassen of Fallujah told IPS. "My two sons have been detained by police, and I am terrified that they will have the same fate. They are only 17 and 18 years old."

Residents of Fallujah say the local police detention centre holds hundreds of men, who have had no legal representation.

Others are killed by random fire that has long become routine for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. Sa'ad, a 25-year-old from the al-Thubbat area of western Fallujah was killed in such firing......

Last week, U.S. military fire severely damaged the highest minaret in Fallujah after three soldiers were killed in an attack. What was seen as reprisal fire on the minaret has angered residents.

"They hate us because we are Muslims, and no one can argue with that any more," 65- year-old Abu Fayssal who witnessed the event told IPS. "They say they are fighting al- Qeada but they are only capable of killing our sons with their genocidal campaign and destroying our mosques.".....

Adding to the violence are U.S.-backed Shia militias which regularly raid Sunni areas under the eyes of the U.S. and Iraqi army. Residents of Fallujah, Ramadi, and especially Baghdad have regularly reported to IPS over the last two years that Shia militiamen are allowed through U.S. military cordons into Sunni neighbourhoods to conduct raids.

Last month, residents report, more than 100 men aged 20 to 40 were executed by Shia militias in Iskandariya 40 km south of Baghdad and Tal Afar 350 km northwest of the capital. Another 50 were detained by the Iraqi Army's fifth division, that many believe is the biggest death squad in the country....."

By Daryl Cagle


By R.J. Matson

د. عادل سمارة
(From Ramallah, Palestine)

"ومان فقط لبحث كل شيىء، فهل تكفيّ أم أن الأشياء مبحوثة، وربما الأجندة مرسلة سلفاً على جناج الجنِّي المعاصر "الإنترنيت".
لم يكن هناك حدثاً يقتضي قمة سريعة ملحة كهذه. إذن، هذا بحد ذاته مثار قلق، بمعنى أن وراء القمة ما ورائها. حين يلتقي كافة الحكام العرب ويتحدثون عن تضامنهم، فعلينا التنبؤ بما هو خطير طالما نعرف أن "الدولة عدو الأمة".
فلو كانت القمة لقضايا الوطن، لكانت قمة الإعداد للمقاومة ضد الإحتلال الصهيوني لفلسطين، والأميركي للعراق والصومال وأجزاء من السودان. هذا هو المطلوب عربياً. ولو كانت إعداداً لمقاومة، لوضعت على أجندتها فائض ثروة النفط لتوظيفه في التنمية والمقاومة. ولكن، هذه محرمات، لأن تفاعلهما الجدلي ينتج الوحدة. وكيف تفعل تمفصلات سايكس-بيكو كل هذا؟

الصومال...نسيان!
قد يستفز الكثيرين أن نبدأ بالصومال، هذا القطر الذي "نساه العرب الأقحاح” (مظفر النواب) ...كما نسوا فلسطين، بلد فقير، على حافة الوطن.
فالصومال تحت احتلال جديد بالمطلق، احتلال قامت به الولايات المتحدة ممتطية ديكتاتور اثيوبيا. لم يتحرك الحكام العرب، وحتى القمة لم تقل كلمة واحدة عن قطر بأكمله. هذا رغم أن اليوم الثاني للقمة شهد مذبحة هناك. فقط للتذكير، ولكن لا معتصماه.
هل يُعقل أن تنسى القمة قطراً بأكمله لو كانت أجندتها عربية! ولكن، كيف تتحدث القمة عن الصومال، وواضع اجندة القمة هو من إحتل البلد، وأرسل ممثله الصومالي ليحضر القمة.
قد تكفي الإشارة للصومال هنا للتأكد من أن القمة محكومة بانتماء عميق لسايكس بيكو.

ولكن...لماذا فلسطين؟
قالوا جميعاً ولا سيما ممثل الجميع أمين عام جامعة الدول العربية عمرو موسى، ان السلام خيار استراتيجي وأن مرتكز المبادرة العربية هو الأرض مقابل السلام.
هنا نصل إلى النقطة الخطرة، فالقمة تضامن عربي تمهيدا لاستسلام شامل,. وللتذكير، فقد رفع شعار التضامن العربي عام 1967، بعد هزيمة حزيران، وهو تضامن كان مقصود به التطامن. فالدول التي دخلت الحرب هزمت وكسرت شوكتها. والدول التي لم تدخل الحرب هزمت دون حرب. إذن لا مفخرة لأحد، واية مناكفة سوف تحرج الجميع، فاتفقوا حينها أيضا على إزالة آثار العدوان. ومنذ تلك اللحظة شطب حق العودة، فما بالك بالتحرير؟
السلام خيار استراتيجي، وهذا معناه أن السلام هو الذي سيطرد إثيوبيا الأميركية من الصومال وأمريكا من العراق وإسرائيل من فلسطين، ولاحقاً اي قطر آخر، لن يطلق اي نظام على أي احتلال طلقة واحدة، فهم قد "طلّقوا المقاومة". فالنظام الرسمي العربي هو مبدع التحرير "بالسلام"
أما الأخطر فهو "الأرض مقابل السلام"، اية أرض؟ لا شك، ليس المقصود الإحتلال الأول لفلسطين 1948، ولا حتى الإحتلال الثاني 1967، حتى لو ورد نصاًّ في مقررات القمة. فما أكثر المقررات التي كان عدم ذكرها أحفظ لماء الوجه.
وأبعد من هذا، فقد سبقهم فلسطينيون للقبول بغزة-أريحا مقابل السلام، ولم يحصل.

الفوائض للتعويض وعودة عن العودة
ليست هذه القمة سوى استكمالاًً للموقف العربي الرسمي من العدوان على لبنان في العام الماضي، الموقف الذي قال لإسرائيل:"حطمي عظام حزب الله". فلا بد من اغتيال كافة مظاهر المقاومة المدنية والمسلحة للوصول إلى التسوية. وهو نفس المطلب الذي طلبته الولايات المتحدة وفرنسا.
إذن ما المتوقع من قمة دعى لها الحكم السعودي الذي طلب من إسرائيل تدمير حزب الله، لأنه قاوم!
لا شك أن القمة تشي بنفسها. فالحكام العرب سائرون باتجاه الإعتراف الجماعي، والتطبيع الجماعي مع إسرائيل. أما الأرض مقابل السلام، والحل العادل لقضية اللاجئين، فتعني بلا مواربة، بعض أرض الضفة والقطاع وتعني تعويض اللاجئين بدل عودتهم.
ولن يكون التعويض من إسرائيل ولا من الولايات المتحدة، بل من فوائض النفط. فالأعداء لا يدفعون. أما كيفية الدفع ولمن، فحسب من يريد أن يعرف أن يعود للدراسات الكثيرة التي كتبت عن هذا الأمر. فالأموال لن تدفع للاجئين، بل للحكومات التي استضافتهم وقمعتهم، لتخلق لهم مجالات عمل أو شواغر اعتقال ، لا فرق.
بقي أن نقول، هل يخجل مداحو المبادرة العربية، الذين يمتدحون عدم تنازل الأنظمة عن اي بند من المبادرة.
ايها السادة، إن الميادرة بحد ذاتها كتلة من التنازلات، فالتنازل عنها لا بد أن يعني موقفاً معاكساً لها. "

The Invasion is Easy; It's the Retreat That is Hard

By WILLIAM S. LIND
CounterPunch

"While dilettantes believe the attack is the most difficult military art, most soldiers know better. Carrying out a successful retreat is usually far harder.

One of history's most successful retreats, and certainly its most famous, is the "Retreat of the 10,000." In 401 B.C., 10,000 Greek hoplites hired themselves out as mercenaries to a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, who was making a grab for the Peacock Throne. Inconveniently, after the Greeks were deep in Persia, Cyrus was killed. The hoplites' leader, Xenophon, the first gentleman of war, led his men on an epic retreat through Kurdish country to the coast and home. Surprisingly, most of them made it. Safely back in Athens, Xenophon wrote up his army's story, cleverly titling it the Anabasis, which means the advance. It was not the last retreat so labelled.

If the above scenario sounds familiar, it should. America now has an army, not of 10,000 but of more than 140,000, deep in Persia (which effectively includes Shiite Iraq, despite the ethnic difference). We are propping up a shaky local regime in a civil war. Our local allies are of dubious loyalty, and the surrounding population is not friendly. Our lines of communication, supply and retreat all run south, to Kuwait, through Shiite militia country. They then extend on through the Persian Gulf, which is called that for a reason. If those lines are cut, many of our troops have only one way out, the same way Xenophon took, up through Kurdish country and Asia Minor (now Turkey) to the coast......"

Jeremy Scahill on Soldiers of Fortune

"Jeremy Scahill speaks with Truthdig about his new book “Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,” privatization in America and abroad and our dysfunctional democracy."

An audio as well as a transcript.

"Doha - Ma'an - The Doha Debates, a public forum for dialogue and freedom of speech in Doha, Qatar, has overwhelmingly voted against Palestinian refugees reneging their right of return to the Palestinian territories.

The question presented to participants at Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates was, 'Should the Palestinians give up their right to return to their homeland after decades of misery and suffering in refugee camps across the world?'

Presenting the question were two well-known Jewish personalities from Israel and two leading human rights activists from the Palestinian territories. Notably, the two members of each of the sides for and against the motion consisted of one Israeli and one Palestinian.

Speaking for the motion were Bassem Eid, founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and Yossi Belin, currently a member of the Israeli Knesset and Chairman of the Meretz, Yachad Party.

Speaking against the motion were Dr Ilan Pappe, an eminent Jewish author and historian and senior lecturer of political science at the Haifa University and Ali Abunimah, son of a Palestinian refugee and co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, an Internet gateway about Palestine and the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Bassam opened the discussion by stating that Palestinians in refugees camps across the world have been living in dire condition and have suffered for 60 years.

He declared, “Having spent 40 years in a refugee camp I have lost all hope and energy to fight. If any Palestinian still maintain that spirit, he is most welcome to continue fighting,” said Bassem.

According to Qatar daily, The Peninsula, the view that dominated the debate was that the right of return is a fundamental right and should be protected.

Dr Pappe pointed out that a huge majority of Palestinian refugees still long to return to their homeland.

Pappe called on the international community to respond to Israel in a similar way to apartheid South Africa in order to end racial discrimination, “The same could happen in Palestine, if there is international pressure on Israel to change its racist policies,” said Pappe.

On the opposite side, arguing for the motion, Yossi Bellin appealed to particpants' pragmatic side, stating that a majority of Jews in Israel will never accept the full return of the Palestinian refugees, which will change the demographic pattern of Israeli society.

Bellin suggested instead that Israel allow a limited return of refugees and provide compensation to those who agree to give up their claim to return. No peace process is going to succeed without a permanent solution to the refugee issue, he added.

Only 18.4 % of the participants voted for the motion that Palestinians renounce their right of return to their land. "

Also see this:

Doha Debates backs Palestinian refugees' right to return

".....Abu Nimah said during his visits to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, he found that despite their sufferings, majority of the refugees are still longing to go back to Palestine. Both the speakers called for a solution to the Palestinian issue in the same way the Apartheid system in South Africa was tackled. The racist system in South Africa prolonged for about 300 years but now the Blacks and the Whites live in harmony in the country. "The same could happen in Palestine, if there is international pressure on Israel to change its racist policies," said Pappe.

Both the panelists proposed a one-state solution to the Palestinian issue, where Jews, Muslims and Christians can live in harmony under a joint government....."

Azzaman via uruknet

"Iraqi insurgents have intensified their attacks on U.S. targets inside the restive city of Falluja and the outlying villages and towns.

Daring attacks have taken U.S. troops aback in a city where the majority of its nearly 300,000 people are not happy with the presence of U.S. invaders.

Falluja has become a symbol of anti-U.S. resistance not only in Iraq but across most of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

It took the mighty U.S. military more than a month to flush the rebels out in 2004. The battle to regain the city caused massive destruction and had turned most of it into heaps of ruins.

But the rebels, most of whom had retreated to the countryside to escape devastating U.S. firepower, have reorganized their ranks and are now using more sophisticated means to drive the Americans away.

Two trucks one loaded with explosives and the other with toxic gas penetrated the fortified U.S. military camp in the city. The first suicide bomber drove through the gate with his explosives-laden truck only to be followed by the second truck full of chlorine bombs.

The rebels see the massive 2004 falluja attack as a defeat for the U.S. and a turning point in the battled to force its troops out of the country.

In the attack on the U.S. base, the second truck with poisonous gas entered the camp. The U.S. has not yet released reports of casualties but Iraqi police sources say tens of people, mostly Iraqi police officers as well as U.S. servicemen, were killed or injured.

The U.S. has placed the city under a strict curfew which is already in its third day and has banned people and trucks from leaving or entering the city, further fuelling popular resentment and anger at their tactics.

Despite the presence of thousands of U.S. troops inside and outside the city, the rebels still seem to have the upper hand.

They are almost in full control during the night and carry out hit and run attacks during the day."

No agreed maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran

by Craig Murray
(As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.)

".....'Bumping into the Iranians can’t be helped in the northern Persian Gulf, where the lines between Iraqi and Iranian territorial water are blurred, officials said.

"No maritime border has been agreed upon by the two countries," Lockwood said.'

That is Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter Lockwood. He is the Commander of the Combined Task Force in the Northern Persian Gulf.

I might even know something about it myself, having been Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1989 to 1992, and having been personally responsible in the Embargo Surveillance Centre for getting individual real time clearance for the Royal Navy to board specific vessels in these waters.

As I feared, Blair adopted the stupid and confrontational approach of publishing maps ignoring the boundary dispute, thus claiming a very blurred situation is crystal clear and the Iranians totally in the wrong. This has in turn notched the Iranians up another twist in their own spiral of intransigence and stupidity.

Both the British and the Iranian governments are milking this for maximum propaganda value and playing to their respective galleries. Neither has any real care at all for either the British captives or the thousands who could die in Iran and Basra if this gets out of hand.

Tony Blair's contempt for Middle Eastern lives has already been adequately demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon. His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen demonstrated by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead British serviceman or woman, killed in the wars he created. He is confronting an Iranian leadership with an equal lust for glory and lack of human concern.

It is essential now for both sides to back down. No solution is possible if either side continues to insist that the other is completely in the wrong and they are completely in the right. And the first step towards finding a peaceful way out, is to acknowledge the self-evident truth that maritime boundaries are disputed and problematic in this area.

Both sides can therefore accept that the other acted in good faith with regard to their view of where the boundary was. They can also accept that boats move about and all the coordinates given by either party were also in good faith. The captives should be immediately released and, to international acclamation, Iran and Iraq, which now are good neighbours, should appoint a joint panel of judges to arbitrate a maritime boundary and settle this boundary dispute.

That is the way out. For the British to insist on their little red border line, or the Iranians on their GPS coordinates, plainly indicates a greater desire to score propaganda points in the run up to a war in which a lot of people will die, than to resolve the dispute and free the captives. The international community needs to put heavy pressure on both Britain and Iran to stop this mad confrontation.

The British people must break out of the jingoism created by their laudable concern for their servicemen and woman, and realise that this is just a small part of the madness of our policy of continual war in the Middle East. That is what we have to stop."

This is an interesting poll since it gauges the attitude of the Arab public towards and sympathy for Iran. The question is:

Do you believe that Iran is justified in holding the British sailors?

With about 1,500 responding so far, 85% said yes. You can imagine the support for Iran from the Arab public if it gets attacked by Usrael.

This shows the dismal failure of the puppet Arab leadership in instigating Arabs against Iran, Sunnis against Shiites, and in support of Usrael. It also speaks well for the maturity and sophistication of at least the educated and world savvy Arab public. The Arab "leadership," including the Palestinian variety, has never been more isolated and removed from the sentiments and aspirations of the people.

by Tony Karon and Tom Engelhardt

"......Rather than a patient plan crafted by the U.S. Secretary of State as some miraculous alchemist of grand strategy, the latest flurry of activity reflects the maturing of a range of crises in the Middle East that have festered dangerously, while Condi fiddled. These include:

* The fact that the Bush administration has only exerted itself – and then just symbolically – on the Israeli-Palestinian front when it was desperate for favors from allied Arab regimes on other fronts, notably the roiling crises in Iraq and Iran. With the U.S. struggling unsuccessfully on both fronts, its vaunted ability to influence events in the region is in precipitous decline.

* The fact that the Arab regimes most closely allied to the U.S. face mounting crises of legitimacy at home, damned not only by their authoritarianism, but also by their paralysis in the face of U.S. and Israeli violence against Arab populations. Delivering the Palestinians to statehood is now seen by those regimes as essential to their own domestic political survival.

* The fact that an Israeli government, which came to power promising peace through unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, having fought a disastrous war in Lebanon and facing a never-ending struggle in Gaza, is seemingly disengaged from itself, its policies in tatters. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is drowning in a sea of corruption, scandals, and recriminations over the strategic and tactical incompetence he demonstrated in last summer's Lebanon war. With his own approval ratings at an astonishing 3%, he desperately needs a new idea to persuade Israeli voters that there's any reason to keep him in office.

* The fact that the Palestinians are experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian and political breakdown. All factions of the Palestinian government share an overwhelming incentive to get the financial siege lifted from battered, strife-torn Gaza. President Abbas' political future and legacy rest solely on completing the Oslo peace process; while for Hamas – at least for its more pragmatic political leadership – allowing President Abbas to pursue that course (particularly when it carries pan-Arab blessing) makes a certain sense. Hamas's political choices have always reflected a keen sense of Palestinian popular sentiment. By maintaining a distant and ambiguous stance towards Abbas's diplomatic efforts, it can plausibly deny complicity if the outcome proves unpopular on the Palestinian street......."

War with Iran augurs a global conflict

By Justin Raimondo

"Our "free" media is so eager to accept the official British explanation of why their sailors/Marines wound up in Iranian custody that most Western "news" accounts are ignoring all evidence to the contrary, such as the trenchant observation of former British diplomat Craig Murray......

Iranian behavior in this matter seems predicated on the assumption that the decision to attack them has already been made. Why else would they parade the 15 captives in front of the cameras, and release two letters of one of them, including a call for the Western withdrawal from Iraq? Since the bombs will fall in any event, why not make propaganda while the sun shines?.....

It's amazing that the War Party, after delivering a body blow to our military and American interests throughout the world by invading Iraq, can mobilize its forces to make yet another go of it – this time on a much larger scale. That they are doing it without much political opposition, is even more astounding – and that speaks volumes about the corruption and betrayal of our "democratic" system, which is no reflection of the popular will. In a sane world, anyone who so much as suggested the possibility of starting another war in the Middle East would be taken out and horsewhipped. In the Bizarro World universe we seem to have slipped into post-9/11, however, such madness is the norm.

Where are our intellectual, political, and religious leaders? Will no one arise to end our national nightmare and lead us to safety? Both political parties are equally complicit: not a single major declared presidential candidate has spoken out against this crazed course, which seems unalterable, and, at this point, inevitable. I throw my hands up in despair at the terrible power of the Lobby, and wonder, aloud, why no one of any stature dares stand up to them. It doesn't seem possible that we are being pushed into a bigger and far more destructive conflict, and yet it is all happening rather quickly.

The coming war with Iran will not end until the entire region is aflame – with the fire spreading to three continents, and beyond. Is this the price the world is willing to pay to put an end to the "existential threat" to Israel? Or will our rulers pause, before plunging into an abyss, to ask: what about the existential threat to the rest of the world?"

"Gaza - ma'an – Although the environmental disaster that occurred three days ago in the Gaza Strip was expected, the Palestinian Authority did nothing to prevent it according to the citizens of the village of Um Nasser.

The bursting of a cesspit near the village destroyed most of the houses in Um Nasser with floods of sewage water.....

The villagers said that they will never forget the disaster and insisted that this terrible accident is never repeated.

They called on the PA to find a suitable solution to the problem and appealed to officials to solve them problem of the families who are now living outdoors.

They also urged the PA to compensate them for their losses.

The villagers insisted that the PA officials are not paying enough attention to the crisis and some accused the PA of lying about the incident.

Other villagers said that they have contacted the PA officials but none of them have visited the scene of the disaster.

The villagers accused the PA of not warning the local citizens of the dangers in the area. "

***

Silly villagers: Don't you know that the PA with its "president" and "prime minister" has more important things to attend to than your sewage and your lives? There are new suits and ties for Habila to try on. There are jet flights not to miss. There are summit meetings to appear in. There are countless dignitaries to meet and numerous cameras to pose for. There are countless fake smiles that our "leaders" valiantly and readily produce for anyone who pays them attention. There are press conferences to appear in and useless and worn out statements to make.

And for heaven's sake don’t you dare embarrass our "leadership" while enjoying the company of the rich and powerful Arab "leaders" in the gold-trimmed palaces in Saudi Arabia. How dare you scream in anguish about your loss and your dead! This is not the PA's business. Its business is not your security and well being but that of Israel. For the latter millions and millions of dollars are spent and thousands are selected and trained by the best American trainers.

So, to paraphrase a crude Arabic expression, you better shut up and eat sewage.

"‘Influential Arab countries are beginning to understand that Israel is not their greatest concern; this marks a revolutionary change in their outlook,’ prime minister tells Kadima members in Jerusalem.......

“Saudi Arabia is the country that will eventually determine that Arabs’ ability to reach a compromise with Israel. Its willingness to lead and intervene is very interesting. We are not exaggerating the importance of this issue, but we are not dismissing it either.”"

عبد الباري عطوان

30/03/2007

اختتمت القمة العربية التاسعة عشرة اعمالها في الرياض بإعادة التأكيد علي احياء مبادرة" السلام العربية، ولكنها تبنت قرارات غريبة غير مسبوقة، تعكس تعليمات السيدة كوندوليزا رايس وزيرة الخارجية الامريكية مثل نشر ثقافة الاعتدال وتعديل المناهج التعليمية.
اعتماد مبادرة السلام مجددا لا يعني ان القادة العرب سيتمسكون ببنودها حرفيا، خاصة بعد تأكيد اكثر من مسؤول عربي، من بينهم السيد عمرو موسي امين عام جامعة الدول العربية بانها ستكون الارضية او الاطار الذي سيوضع علي مائدة المفاوضات مستقبلا.
اتفاق المصالحة الفلسطيني في مكة كان القابلة الاساسية لإعادة انتاج المبادرة العربية هذه، لانه ضمن دخول حركة حماس جبهة الرفض الاسلامية الفلسطينية الي بيت الطاعة العربي، وحضور السيد اسماعيل هنية رئيس وزراء حكومة الوحدة الوطنية الفلسطينية خلف السيد محمود عباس رئيس السلطة الذي حرص علي تكرار جميع مطالب اللجنة الرباعية الدولية في كلمته، مثل نبذ الارهاب والاعتراف باسرائيل، هو تأكيد علي انضمام هذه الحركة الي معسكر الاعتدال ولو بصفة مراقب كخطوة اولي علي الأقل.
ولا نعرف نوعية الاعتدال الذي ستعمل القمة العربية علي نشر ثقافته، فمثل هذا المفهوم ظهر علي سطح الاحداث في المنطقة العربية بقوة اثناء العدوان الاسرائيلي علي لبنان، واطلق علي الدول التي ساندته بطريقة غير مباشرة عندما حمّلت حزب الله اللبناني مسؤولية استفزاز الدولة العبرية بعملية فدائية ادت الي مقتل ثلاثة جنود اسرائيليين وأسر اثنين آخرين.
فالاعتدال فيما يبدو هو القبول بالدولة العبرية، وعدم الاحتجاج علي عدوانها، والتسليم ببرنامجها النووي الذي انتج حتي الآن اكثر من ثلاثمئة قنبلة ذرية كسند للأمة العربية في مواجهة اعدائها الايرانيين.
ويبدو ان الاعوجاج الذي هو نقيض الاعتدال، وتتبني القمة محاربته يتمثل في التمسك بالثوابت، فكل مطالبة باستخدام سلاح المقاومة لتحرير الارض هو اعوجاج ، وكل حديث عن تجريد الدولة العبرية من اسلحتها النووية هو انحراف يتناقض مع توجهات التسامح الجديدة.
تعديل المناهج الذي جري تشريعه بقرار من القمة العربية، لن يكون هدفه جعل الجامعات العربية اكثر تطورا من جامعات هارفرد واكسفورد وبريستون، في مجالات العلوم الفيزيائية والكيماوية والهندسية والتكنولوجية، وانما حذف كل ما يحرض علي المقاومة او الجهاد، ويسمي الاعداء باسمائهم، ويطالب بالانتصار لقضايا الأمة وكرامتها.
لم نسمع في القمة الجديدة عما سمعناه في القمم السابقة في تونس والجزائر علي وجه التحديد، اي الاصلاح السياسي والاقتصادي والاجتماعي في الوطن العربي. فلم نسمع زعيما عربيا واحدا يتطرق الي هذه المسألة علي الاطلاق، فلماذا هذا البرود تجاه مثل هذه القضية الحساسة وذات الاولوية في قمم سابقة؟
هل لان هذا الاصلاح تمت ترجمته علي شكل ربع انتخابات في السعودية، وتعديلات دستورية تؤكد الديكتاتورية وتضيف الي قوانين الطواريء، وتمهد للتوريث في مصر، ومزيد من الاعتقالات في معظم الدول العربية الاخري؟
فمن الواضح، ومثلما جاء في البيان الختامي للقمة، ان الاعتدال اصبح عنوانا للديكتاتورية والقمع والتعذيب ومصادرة الحريات، فمعظم دول محور الاعتدال العربي المدعومة امريكيا هي الاكثر ديكتاتورية بين اقرانها. بل ان هناك دولا خارج هذا المحور تقدم تجارب ديمقراطية متميزة تستحق التنويه مثل المغرب مثلا.
ان قبول القمة العربية وبحضور عدة زعماء اسلاميين الترويج لثقافة الاعتدال هو اعتراف غير مسبوق بأن العرب هم مصدر التطرف والارهاب في العالم. وهو اعتراف خطير بكل المقاييس، فالتطرف فرض علي العرب وهم امة وسط ومن قبل الولايات المتحدة الامريكية وحروبها التدميرية في العراق ودعمها المستمر للعدوان الاسرائيلي في فلسطين، هذه السياسات هي التي اثارت حالة من الاحباط واليأس في ظل انظمة عربية عاجزة ديكتاتورية متواطئة ودفعت هذا الشباب الي الذهاب بعيدا في معتقداتهم والانضمام الي الجماعات الاسلامية والعلمانية المتشددة.
نحن نريد تعديل المناهج، ونشر ثقافة الاعتدال، ولكن من اجل اصلاح داخلي حقيقي، وليس من اجل توظيف المنطقة في خدمة حروب امريكية، والتنازل عن جوهر القضية الفلسطينية من اجل ارضاء الرئيس بوش، واستدراج الدولة العبرية الي عملية سلام تقوم علي اساس شروطها هي لا ثوابتنا نحن.
الكثيرون اشادوا بخطاب العاهل السعودي الملك عبدالله بن عبد العزيز، والفقرة المتعلقة منه بالاعتراف بوقوع العراق تحت احتلال اجنبي غير شرعي، ولكن لم يسأل احد عمن سهل هذا الاحتلال للعراق، وتعاون معه، وساند المشاريع السياسية التي افرزها وقادته الي الحرب الاهلية الطائفية التي يعيشها حاليا ويدفع ثمنها من دماء ابنائه.
دول محور الاعتدال العربي هي التي ساندت الغزو، وأيدت الحصار المفروض علي العراق لاكثر من عشر سنوات، وحرضت علي اطاحة النظام فيه، والان تتباكي علي هذا البلد وتستنكر احتلاله، وتعتبره غير شرعي، لان النتائج جاءت لمصلحة ايران ونفوذها، الدولة التي حلت محل العراق والنظام البعثي فيه كمصدر تهديد لاستقرار دول الجوار.
الاسابيع القليلة المقبلة ستكون حافلة بالاحداث علاوة علي كونها ستقدم الاختبار الحقيقي لمبادرة السلام العربية ومدي قبول الطرف الآخر بها، ويظل السؤال هو عما اذا ما طلبت اسرائيل من راعي القمة العربية والمصدر الاساسي لهذه المبادرة التفاوض معها مباشرة لشرح تفاصيلها؟
فهل ستقبل المملكة العربية السعودية بهذا الطلب ام لا؟
فتفعيل المبادرة، من خلال آليات محددة يعني القيام بجهد دبلوماسي علي الاصعدة كافة، ومن الطبيعي ان يكون الطرف الاخر، اي الطرف الاسرائيلي هو المقصود الاول بهذا التفعيل.
المشكلة ان الطرف الآخر ضعيف، فاولمرت لا يتمتع الا بتأييد اقل من خمسة في المئة من الشعب الاسرائيلي، ويواجه العديد من اتهامات الفساد. فكيف، وهذا هو وضعه، سيستطيع تقديم تنازلات رئيسية للطرف العربي؟
الحضور الكثيف لزعامات العالم السني مثل برويز مشرف رئيس باكستان، ورجب طيب اردوغان رئيس وزراء تركيا، وعبد الله بدوي رئيس وزراء ماليزيا ينطوي علي مغزي كبير، وهو اننا مقبلون علي تقسيم مختلف للعالم الاسلامي، تقسيم يقوم علي اساس معسكر سني ومعسكر شيعي، وقد تكون هذه القمة هي اول تأسيس للمحور الاول الذي سيشترك في الحرب المقبلة ضد ايران.
طائر ابو فصادة كان يذكرنا دائما بمقدم الشتاء في بلاد الشام، ونضوج ثمار الزيتون، ويبدو ان الحديث عن مبادرات السلام هو عنوان للحروب في المنطقة. هكذا فعلوا عام 1991 عندما دمروا العراق وهكذا فعلوا عام 2003 عندما غزوه، وهكذا يفعلون استعدادا لضرب ايران.

If Israel rejects the best Arab position, perhaps the Arabs should revert to maximal demands and ask Israel to propose a plan

Azmi Bishara at His Best
Al-Ahram Weekly

".....Maybe what was required was a new Arab initiative announced during the incumbencies of these two administrations. Then they might have called it an initiative. Better yet, perhaps the Arabs should come up with a new proposal, every three or four years, modifying the "positions" that had once constituted the cardinal points of the previous peace initiative, so as to placate every new set of American envoys. Then, in 20 years or so, after four or five Israeli governments and American administrations have come and gone, the Arabs will approve of Israel's annexation of a large chunk of the occupied West Bank and they'll feel grateful that Israel not only asked them to recognise just plain Israel but also Article 7a of its organic law in which it describes itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Anything is possible as long as Israel finds Arabs who argue, "it's better to accept what's on offer now, before we're forced to accept something worse."

Such is the fate of a peace initiative that emanates from the dynamics of weakness. Without a victory to make the tenets of a peace initiative more compelling or the ability to alter the balance of power in favour of the authors of the initiative, the initiative remains no more than a proposal in need of more alterations. This is why an initiative maker is either a neutral party who wishes to mediate between antagonistic parties that cannot reach a middle ground on their own, or a victorious party who seeks to translate a military victory into a political one, or an otherwise powerful party that has the power to impose the initiative. As for an initiative that is forwarded hypothetically, it can only be interpreted as a form of backing down and is certain to whet the adversary's appetite for more concessions. Real life is not made up of the simulation games played in the strategic study centres that live off Arab-Israeli dialogues......

Even Benyamin Netanyahu would have been embarrassed to tell the Arabs what that mild and moderate foreign minister did via her speech to the powerful pro- Israeli lobby. What the Arab governments have to do, she said, is to normalise their relations with Israel so as to allay Israel's fears, after which they should wait until Israel gradually changes. Perhaps, eventually, Israel would recognise the Palestinian national unity government and maybe even the Arabs.....

Normally, of course, this is a very positive trait, one that is highly valued in capitalist societies since it is the antonym of the laziness, indifference and lack of initiative with which we Orientals are so often characterised. But in this instance, at least, there was no shortage of the spirit of initiative, especially when it came to pleasing the Americans by agreeing, for example, to lower the threshold of the Arab proposal to the level of the roadmap.....

Unless the occupying power recognises the right of the occupied people to self-determination and declares its intent to withdraw, what you have is not negotiations but another form of bullying, and calling the people sitting around the negotiating table "the two sides" doesn't alter that fact. This is why liberation movements resolve to sustain the resistance and not to negotiate with the occupying power and somehow manage to reconcile the demands of resistance with the demands of day-to-day life until the occupying power declares its readiness to lift the occupation. Only then is there really something to negotiate over.

In Palestine, the liberation movement switched track and began to dream that the occupying power would recognise it. Once that dream was realised, the Palestine Liberation Organisation became one of "two sides", and was then fragmented and reduced to a hypothetical political entity that consisted of remnants of the liberation movement and that enjoyed none of the prerogatives of sovereignty. Eventually, however, the people under occupation were given the opportunity to hold legislative elections and they returned a parliament that produced a government that rejected the post-Oslo game. This government was willing to rule for the very reason it was elected: it stood as a liberation movement determined to fight the occupation. At the same time, however, this government opposed negotiations with Israel, but in order to stay in power it delegated members of its political opponents -- the very people who disintegrated the liberation movement and led the hypothetical political entity -- to enter into negotiations, yet without devising a mechanism to keep negotiators in line. In other words, the government may not have negotiated, but it did not turn its rejection of negotiations into a binding position and it had no way of ensuring that negotiations would not jeopardise the national movement's fixed priorities. Perhaps, one day, it will wake up to the fact that to Israel and the US a Palestinian government consists of no more than a Palestinian Authority president and his advisors who agree to negotiate on Israel's terms. But this subject is better left to another day."

The west was taken in by the Zionist propaganda for several decades, but what is more natural than a Palestinian returning home?

A Very Good Article
Contributed by Lucia

Salman Abu-Sitta
(Salman Abu-Sitta is a Palestinian refugee. He is a member of the Palestine National Council and the general coordinator of the Right of Return Congress. He is the founder and president of Palestine Land Society, London)

The Guardian

".....Both Alex Stein and Menny Morris escape from the fact, slowly seeping into the western conscience, that Palestinians were - and are today - subject to the most massive, comprehensive, meticulously planned and executed and continuous ethnic cleansing operation in modern history. This has long been denied by Israeli historians. A notable exception is a brave and honest Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe.

The sensation created by Benny Morris's revelation about al-Nakba, grudgingly accepted by some Jews, is a stark measure of how the west was taken in by the Zionist propaganda for several decades. The Palestinians do not know whether to laugh or cry, for the "revelations" are only some of what they have been saying all along since 1948. Hundreds of thousands of refugees gave graphic details of their plight but these were dismissed by the Zionist Europeans as "a figment of oriental imagination" until an Israeli historian found damning evidence in Israeli files.

Facts have a way of surfacing. The facts, documented on maps and records, show that in 1948 Israelis depopulated the Palestinian inhabitants of 675 towns and villages, that their land represents 93% of Israel's area; that half of all the refugees have been expelled in the last six weeks of the British Mandate, before the state of Israel was declared and before any Arab regular soldier set foot on Palestine to save its people from the invasion of Jewish European immigrants who had just waded into their shores to build Israel on the ruins of Palestine.

What is more natural than a person returning to their home? If Stein does not believe this is "sacred", he has to ask 6 million Palestinian refugees (two-thirds of all Palestinians) why are they still determined to fight for their right to return over a period of six decades and through three generations and many wars. That the right of return for Palestinians has been affirmed by the UN more than 130 times is enough to put this matter to rest. No need to spill more ink on that score.

If defeated on both counts, Zionists usually resort to their last defence: that the right of return is not possible to implement.

In a civilised society, if a crime is committed, its consequences must be reversed. The criminal should not be rewarded, and his crime should not be forgiven or even legitimised. The stolen property must be returned. Rights must be reinstated and reparation paid for material losses.

This is what the international community insisted upon, sometimes using military force, in implementing the return of refugees to Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Cambodia, East Timor, Georgia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Ruwanda, South Africa, Tajikistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

This is also what the European Jews rightly got when they returned to their former homes (if they so wished), recovered their property in Europe and received massive amounts of compensation for their suffering during the second world war, without the benefit of a single UN resolution.

The pretext that return is not possible because of the influx of Jewish immigrants to Palestine to replace the expelled Palestinians is not a valid one, morally, legally or politically. But we are spared the argument on this point. Here we have yet another one of the misconceptions designed to mislead and misinform the western public. It is not true that it is physically impossible to implement the right of return.

Palestine is the most documented among conflict-torn countries, certainly much more than Bosnia and Kosovo. We have complete UN-documented ownership records of every acre of land. Not a single Israeli Jew has an equivalent title deed after al-Nakba. We have detailed maps of what every acre was, what it is today and can visualise what it could/should be in the future.

We have a huge database of millions of Palestinians - where they come from in Palestine, and where they are residing today, their family structure and their ages. Today, 90% of them reside within 100 km of their homes, 50% within 40km and many can actually see their home on the opposite hill.

That is not all. The refugees' land is still sparsely populated. Eighty per cent of Israeli Jews still live in the same area they acquired during the Mandate and a little more, but 15% of Israel in total. About 18% of the remaining 20% of the Jews live mostly in half a dozen originally Palestinian or mixed cities, considerably enlarged. This leaves 2% of Israeli Jews who are the members of Qibbutz and Moshav.

This small number of population, in addition to the army, use and control 85%-88% of Israel's area, which is the patrimony of 6 million Palestinian refugees. To take an example, all the rural Jews in the southern district from Ashdod (Isdud) to Eilat (Umm Rashrash) are less in number that one refugee camp in Gaza. Their density is six persons per square kilometre while that of Gaza population - the owners of this very land - is 6,000 per square kilometre. These owners of the land are held captive by the occupier in a concentration camp called Gaza. "

Jaffa Harbor in the 1920s.

Jaffa's Ugly Truth

By ARTHUR NESLEN
CounterPunch

"Diplomatic briefcases are unlikely to be dropped at news of Condoleezza Rice's call, on the eve of the Riyadh summit, for Arab states to "reach out to Israel" and show they accept it. Israel's insistence that negotiators begin by accepting its right to exist has already pushed normalisation up the political agenda......

While they are there, perhaps they will incidentally record what could be the final days of the 497 residential properties that are slated for demolition in Ajami, Jaffa's last predominantly Arab district. According to Fady Shbita of the Arab-Jewish Sadaka-Reut ("Friendship") organisation, as many as 2,000 people could be affected.

"There will be a serious struggle over this because it will change the whole structure of Jaffa if it succeeds," he told me. "I would characterise it as a combination of ethnic cleansing or transfer and gentrification." Most people in Ajami just call it ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinian-Israelis who live in Ajami will not be re-housed in Tel Aviv. Even if they could afford the rents here, it's all but unheard of for Arabs to live in most parts of the city. They won't receive compensation either, as they have technically been living in Ajami 'illegally' for decades. Before 1948, more than 70,000 Palestinians lived in Jaffa. During the Naqba, the majority fled and were not allowed to return. Under the Absentee Property Act of 1950, their abandoned houses were seized by the new Israeli state and rented to Jews. The few Arabs who remained were concentrated behind a fence in Ajami.

But times change. The fence came down and, in the 1970s, when beachfront property prices began to rise, Tel Aviv's Mayor, Shlomo "Cheech" Lahat, announced a policy of "Judaising" Jaffa. Building permits in Ajami were frozen and ongoing demolitions funnelled residents into the slums of Lyd and Ramle. Many of the 15,000-20,000 Palestinian-Israelis who stayed in Jaffa were forced to build extensions to their family houses without permits. This practice is now being used as the excuse by the Israeli Lands Authority, a state actor which owns the properties for a new wave of the sort of soulless gentrification and transfer that has hollowed out Jaffa's old town.

Much of the land reclaimed by house demolitions invariably gets sold on for luxury developments like the gated community of Andromeda Hill, "a virtual 'city within a city' surrounded by a wall and secured 24 hours a day," according to its website. Local residents complain that Andromeda Hill was built on land which was formerly owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate "so that rich Jews can enjoy the magic of the sunset in Jaffa without seeing Arabs".

The Jaffa sunset can be truly spectacular but Israel's PR machine is unlikely to encourage photographers to wander the few yards down the road necessary to capture it from Ajami. In this part of the world, beneath the flowers of normalisation lies the rubble of demolished houses."

***

The Ajami district in Jaffa is where I was born in 1945. My family was expelled from our house there and we bacame refugees in Gaza in 1948.

"“In beloved Iraq, blood is shed among our brothers while there is an illegitimate foreign occupation and a hateful sectarianism that is threatening to develop into a civil war . . .”--king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

I seem to recall that Saudi Arabia, together with Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf kennel, supported the U.S. invasion and the occupation of Iraq. Saudi and Kuwaiti (as well as Jordanian) airspace and land were used by the invading army. Kuwaiti territory, to this day, is used to move U.S. troops and supplies into Iraq. Saudi Arabia in addition to Egypt, Jordan and the UAE (and even Syria), still oppose the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq!

So, his "majesty" is only shedding hypocritical crocodile tears for Iraq; the Iraq that he conspired with the enemies to destroy. The only reason Abdullah said such words is not because he is challenging the U.S. or because he is abandoning the sinking ship as some might say. It is because of the fever pitch anger on the Arab street and because of the daily blows of the Iraqi resistance against the occupation which are bringing the Empire to its knees. Abdullah and the rest of the bastards are trying to absorb some of the anger and sooth the angry feelings of the Arab masses. The bastards know that more than 90% of the Arab public (according to surveys) believes that they are nothing but impotent stooges and nothing of substance will emerge from their summit.

As they say in Palestine the summit is like farting on a tile floor.

Tony Sayegh

Devastating Sewage flood hits Umnasr Village -North of Jabalia

"This morning, and due to technical defaults, the sewage system of
north area of Gaza has sudenlly collapsed. Sewage water flooded and
gushed into the next lowest level place, a Bedouin community. As an
outcome, 8 at least were killed including mother and 2 children , 60 or more were injured,school children paniced inside their schools , 3000 residents were
evacuated and became homeless, and 400 residential homes were
either destroyed or unsuitable for living due to the unsanitary
sewage water.

This will need urgent relief intervention from all of us, working in the health and huminatarian relief services. I shall be able
to identify the list of needs by tommorrow morning , which will be
complementry to other relief work agencies.

It is usually the poorest of the poor who suffer, living in such a
slum area next to the sewage system treatment reservoir. It is not
choice, it is poverty that forced them to live there, adding more
and more to their daily suffering under the occupation.

In Arabic we have a saying: "the catastrophies do not not come
alone." This incident was the last we need while living under
occupation and facing the daily hardships of the humanitarian
crisis in Gaza.

In solidarity,
Mona ElFarra "

21-Gun Salute for the Arab Peace Initiative
By Naser Jafari

Statement, Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, 29 March 2007

"On March 30th, as Palestinians in our homeland and the diaspora, we remember Land Day and strengthen our struggle for Land, Justice and Return. In 1976, 6 Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land confiscation scheme in the Galilee. Land theft and colonization continues in the Galilee and Naqab until today.

More than 30 years later, we will be again out in the streets and in the fields confronting the Occupation in dozens of protests and demonstrations, uniting the people in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous mobilization......

While the US-Israeli axis has never been willing to allow any of our rights to be implemented, the continuous presence in our region of US and Western envoys and officials is aimed to pressure Arab leaders into:

1. Ending Arab support for the Right of Return, enshrined into international law (such as UN Resolution 194);

2. Reviving the vicious Oslo mechanism that asks the Palestinian and Arab nations to make the first step: recognizing the Israeli apartheid regime and the “righteousness” of its crimes. Once relations are normalized and international public opinion is appeased, the reality on the ground can be consolidated and the agreement broken by the oppressors.

Against concessions on our inalienable rights and our lives, we will continue to claim our land. We will rise up and put forward our demands, based on the principles of our struggle and the rights of our people......

Finally, the Occupation and the international community will receive our message via demonstrations and protests all over Palestine. It will be a message of continuing resistance and an uncompromising demand for our rights. Another popular Intifada is inevitably building up as long as our rights are ignored and our future confiscated."

All That is Left of the Palestinian Resistance in the West Bank

Brother Dahlan in the Middle; How Sweet!


Dumb and Dumber


The Arab Delegate From the EU, With Brother Dahlan Watching


The Arab Delegate From South Korea



"Trust Me, We Will Not Sell Out the Palestinians; You Trust Me, Don't You?"


Palestinians in Their Hovels Keeping an Eye and Fearing the Worst


The Laughing Stock of the World


Habila is Enjoying the Attention; How Are You Going to Bring Him Back to Gaza and its Problems?


From the Two Abdullahs, Palestinians Should Expect the Worst

"القدس المحتلة ـ اف ب ـ القدس العربي : اعلنت صحيفة يديعوت احرونوت الاربعاء علي صفحتها الاولي ان صحافية تعمل لديها توجد حاليا في الرياض لتغطية القمة العربية.
واوضحت الصحيفة ان اورلي ازولاي مراسلة يديعوت احرونوت في واشنطن منذ عدة سنوات، وصلت الي الرياض الثلاثاء مع صحافيين يرافقون الامين العام للامم المتحدة بان كي مون.
ولم توضح الصحيفة اي جواز سفر استخدمت الصحافية للسفر الي السعودية التي لا تقيم علاقات مع اسرائيل.
وكانت السلطات السعودية قد منعت القدس العربي ولأسباب غير مفهومة من المشاركة في تغطية القمة العربية.
وكانت السفارة السعودية في عمان امتنعت عن منح مدير مكتب القدس العربي في عمان الزميل بسام البدارين التأشيرة اللازمة لحضور القمة فيما امتنعت السفارة عن ذكر الأسباب أو حتي الاعتذار.
وتهرب المسؤول الاعلامي في السفارة السعودية عشرات المرات من الاتصالات التي أجراها مكتب القدس العربي بغرض تأمين التأشيرة اللازمة للمشاركة في تغطية فعاليات القمة.
وتقدم مكتب عمان بناء علي طلب السفارة ومسؤوليها بكل الوثائق اللازمة وفي وقت مبكر قبل القمة بأكثر من أسبوعين ولم تبلغ السفارة الزميل البدارين بأي موقف رسمي او توضيحي لأسباب منع تقديم تأشيرة له علما بانه تقدم بالوثائق المطلوبة."

Quite a Contrast From the Overflowing Sewage in Gaza

An Iraqi Uncle Tom

By HAWRA KARAMA
CounterPunch

"Dear Professor Makiya,

What went wrong, verge of tears, unmitigated disasters; is that all you have to say for yourself at this point?

A smart intellectual with degrees as impressive as yours couldn't figure out that the United States couldn't logically want more good for Iraqis than it did for the Japanese it nuked, the Vietnamese it napalmed or the Palestinians it continues to oppress?

Did you think every Iraqi would swoon at the smell of dollars and conjure grandiose Uncle Tom dreams of dining at the table with the slavemasters?

If you genuinely thought that peace and democracy would bloom like a thousand flowers following the fall of Baghdad, you're either seriously deluded or self-deceptive.

What were you thinking? Were you trying to provide a live example of Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab's description of the invaders' shoes for literature students? And as if it's not enough that you have advocated for a war that was so egregiously criminal ab initio, you then have the audacity to blame Iraq's current disasters on Iraqi victims themselves, over red wine from the comfort of your Cambridge house?

Albeit a cheap attempt to garner political leverage for her presidential campaign, even Hillary Clinton herself is apologizing. What makes you feel so smugly immune from guilt such that the pursuit of redemption is beneath you?

While you, Mr. Makiya, and your gang of American-tank-riding thugs like Chalabi deserve to be tried for crimes against your own homeland, that's not what I wish for you. I just hope Abeer Hamza's ghost haunts you and that the echo of her screams play over and over in your head louder than the "music" that bombs on Baghdad were to your ears. If you have any remnants of a conscience, I hope it's depriving you of sleep for the amount of Iraqi blood you have on your hands. Saddam Hussein himself would've been proud of you for trying so hard to fill his shoes after his demise."

Quit Trying to Make the Democrats Something They'll Never Be

By LARRY EVEREST
CounterPunch

".....Retooling U.S. Strategy-Not Ending the War

The Democrats' bill reflects the deep concern of many ruling class strategists that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and the Bush strategy must be changed to head off even greater disasters for the empire. The interests of the peoples of the Middle East don't enter into their cold-blooded, imperial calculations. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter who has been advising the Democrats, testified before the Senate earlier this year:

"If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran.....

"Redeployment"-not withdrawal: The Democrats are not demanding that U.S. forces immediately leave Iraq-the only just solution-or that they ever leave Iraq. Both Bush and the Democrats envision that thousands of U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years to come-just not on the frontlines of combat in the same way or in the same numbers. Nancy Pelosi's website states: "Following redeployment, U.S. troops remaining in Iraq may only be used for diplomatic protection, counterterrorism operations, and training of Iraqi Security Forces." These open-ended commitments, and the Democrats' refusal to renounce permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, mean that thousands of American troops could be stationed in Iraq for decades to come.....

Preserving the U.S. imperialist military: Another goal of the redeployment is preserving and rebuilding the U.S. military-the U.S.'s main weapon for enforcing its global hegemony. "The war in Iraq has produced a national security crisis," Pelosi warned, "with military readiness at its lowest level since the Vietnam War." In supporting the House bill, Brzezinski stated, "The United States cannot afford an open-ended commitment to a war without end. A means must be devised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq and reduce our troop levels, so that we can begin to rebuild our military and reclaim our position of leadership in the world.".....

But such an outpouring cannot and will not happen as long as millions are putting their hopes in the Democrats-either passively by waiting for 2008, or even actively, by focusing their energy, efforts, hopes, and yes money into pressuring the Democrats to "do the right thing" instead of putting them where they can really count for something: into mobilizing the one force that can stop the war and drive out the Bush regime­ the millions, from all walks of life, who oppose them. Inspiring and organizing these millions to take independent mass political action based on the just demands of ending the war and turning back all the outrages of the Bush regime from torture to spying to theocracy, is the only realistic option and the only way these crimes will be stopped. It will never happen by hoping the Democrats become something they're not, and never have been."

Look at These Fossilized "Leaders"....Need I Say More?

This devastating picture of total surreal detachment between the two events, between a meaningless political intercourse and a devastating destruction on the ground is the true reality of the Palestinian disaster.

By Gilad Atzmon

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday the decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas to meet bi-weekly with the US mediating. Indeed ‘great news’ for the Palestinians and the Israelis.

More or less at the same time at least five Palestinians drowned in a “sewage Tsunami” when a water treatment reservoir burst, flooding Umm Naser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

While in a peaceful news conference in Jerusalem Rice once again said NO to the democratically elected Hamas referring to the PA chairman as a “partner for peace”, a Bedouin village in Gaza was submerged in sewage.

This devastating picture of total surreal detachment between the two events, between a meaningless political intercourse and a devastating destruction on the ground is the true reality of the Palestinian disaster. This reflects upon the zero Western political leadership’s commitment to humanist and ethical thinking, it reflects upon our abandonment of the Palestinian people, it is a reminder of our general negligence towards people who are mercilessly dispossessed for six decades, our blindness towards what seems to be a suffering with no end and no limit.

Rice called on regional Arab states to “participate actively in the peace process”. She welcomed as well the Saudi peace plan as “an example of such new thinking.” And I end up asking myself when was the last time Rice or the Saudi Crown family had been submerged in Sewage? Rice probably failed to realise that people, who happen to be flooded by ‘treated water’, want something slightly more significant than a mere ‘peace process’. Mrs Rice, shouldn’t we better start with food? In case you didn’t realise, your embargo on the Hamas government has led to unprecedented starvation in Gaza. Some 80% of Gaza’s population relies upon WFP’s aid and on that from the UNRWA, the UN agency for refugees.

More or less by the time the US secretary of state concluded that the two leaders would discuss a “political horizon,” it was clear that dozens of residents of Umm Naser were still unaccounted for.

By late afternoon, receding flood waters had left a foul-smelling muck. Village children clung to wooden doors floating on the putrid waters. Rescuers were paddling through the village searching for victims. Frantic goats and cows were seen swimming in the mud searching for safe ground.

By the time Rice left the region it was revealed that the ‘negotiations’ between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas will not include the three core issues - Jerusalem, refugees and borders. How surprising.

Instead of going from Jerusalem to Riyadh, Rice went back to Washington. She realised that she had nothing to offer the Arab leaders summit. She has nothing to offer almost as much as the people of Umm Naser have nothing to lose."

An Important Article

Al-Manar

"28/03/2007 Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged Arab leaders meeting at a summit in Riyadh on Wednesday not to compromise on the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes. Haniyeh added that his group would not oppose the Arab plan, but would not give in on the Palestinian refugees' right of return. "What concerns me more than anything else ... is not to compromise on the fundamental Palestinian rights, foremost being the right of return," Haniyeh said shortly before the summit opened. "I expect the Arab summit meeting in Riyadh to reiterate the Arab countries' commitment not to compromise in any way on the Palestinian refugees right of return under any circumstances," Haniyeh said.

The peace plan is set to offer the Jewish state normal ties with all Arab countries if it fully withdraws from land it occupied in 1967, accepts a Palestinian state and agrees to a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel have recently held secret talks to formulate a new diplomatic-financial initiative aimed at resolving the Palestinian refugee problem, by offering compensation to those willing to stay in their countries of residence. According to Yediot Aharonot, the negotiations were led by senior American officials, and included Saudi secretary-general of the National Security Council, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and top Israeli officials. According to the new initiative, refugees who agreed to remain in their countries of residence would receive financial compensation. Those who insisted on realizing the right of return would only be allowed to return to the Palestinian territories. Their return would be coordinated with the Palestinian Authority, in order to prevent "a flood of refugees, and severe economic problems."

At the same time, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the US would finance projects to improve the refugees' quality of life and create more jobs for them.

Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is boycotting the Arab League summit in Riyadh, is expected to oppose the plan. Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees live in Libya, and Gaddafi may threaten to deport them should the initiative pass. Syria's stance on the issue is also unclear at present; the country is currently home to over Palestinian 200,000 refugees. The new plan gives precedence to aiding the 300,000 refugees in Lebanon, whose condition has been defined as "very bad." Jordan, which is home to the greatest number of refugees, more than 1.5 million, and several Emirates, have already agreed to the plan."

The Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors may be much cleverer than it appears. Oil has moved above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident. And if Tehran drags out proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation, and even start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance.

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

".....The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.....

The Shatt-al-Arab incident has been linked to an Iranian response to Washington's accusations that Tehran is helping Shi'ite militias with funds, weapons and training in Iraq. For the record, Iran's ambassador in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said there is absolutely no connection: "They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested. It has nothing to do with other issues." Not surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had to take the side of the occupiers who installed him in his post: he said the British were in Iraq invited by the Iraqi government and were operating in Iraqi waters.....

From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world - which is not so fond of Persians - sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East. More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran......

But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.

If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess. "

An Arab Summit

Another War Party stalwart cuts and runs

By Justin Raimondo

"In the late Sixties, the Iraqi-born Kanan Makiya was a Trotskyist, a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S., and later, in Britain, an activist in the International Marxist Group, the British section of the Trots' Fourth International. Then, as Edward Said put it,

"He switched sides and during the early 1980s he and his father, who own a firm called Makiya Associates, were employed by President Saddam Hussein to build a large number of buildings and projects, including a military parade ground for the observation of Saddam's birthday in Tikrit [Saddam's hometown], so he benefited from his connection with the Iraqis. And it was during this time that he used his second pseudonym, Samir al-Khalil, to write Republic of Fear [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989]."

The book was taken up by the War Party as one of its seminal texts, cited by the regime-changers as evidence of the moral and practical necessity of ridding the world of Ba'athism. From a "full-time political activist" in the service of the Fourth International, Makiya, like so many others, made a surprisingly smooth transition to activism in the service of the 101st Airborne......

We can only hope that Makiya's malady is contagious and the rest of the neocons will come down with writer's block before too long. Like the dinosaurs, in one fell swoop an entire species, Homo neoconservatismus, will become extinct – and suddenly the world will be a much more peaceful place.

Oh well, I can dream, can't I?"

Rice: The Arabs Need to Extend Their Hand (in peace) to Israel
By Naser Jafari

To All Palestinians: Rejoice and Celebrate.....
This Abdullah Will Liberate You Just As The Jordanian Abdullah Did in 1948......
You Forgot Already?

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"We speak with independent journalist Reese Erlich about his report on Iranian Kurdish guerillas based among their Kurdish bretheren in northern Iraq. Erlich writes, "Kurdish and American sources say the United States has been supporting guerilla raids against Iran, channeling the money through organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan."......

AMY GOODMAN: In the latest edition of Mother Jones, you have a piece where you talk about the Iranian/Kurdish guerrillas. Explain who and where they are.

REESE ERLICH: In Northern Iraq there are three Iranian Kurdish groups that operate and that have compounds and do political organizing. Keep in mind that the Kurdish people of Iran face a great deal of oppression, they're not allowed to learn in their own language in the schools. They face discrimination. They're a great deal poorer than the rest of Iran. So the Kurdish people have very legitimate grievances against the government in Tehran. The U.S. has taken advantage of that.

In the case of one group, the P.K.K. or the Kurdistan Workers Party and they are along with Israel sponsoring them to carry out guerrilla raids inside Iran and its part of a much wider plan by the United States to foment discontent and actual terrorist activities by ethnic Iranians in various parts of Iran. And when I was in northern Iraq, I was able to determine that that kind of activity is going on from Iraqi soil under the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq, into Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get to the guerrilla camp?

REESE ERLICH: Well, it's quite interesting, two cell phone calls and a drive up into the mountains. One of the arguments by the Kurdish regional government of Iraq and of the United States is that they can't find these guerrillas because it's so inhospitable territory that no one can find them. They're operating from secret bases, et cetera. But all I did was drive up into the closest Iraqi village and asked the local driver and they say oh, yeah, which of the guerrilla camp do you want to see and we'll take you right up to them. So they are very easy to find......

AMY GOODMAN: And finally Reese Erlich, the relationship of Britain and Israel, both U.S. Allies with these parties.

REESE ERLICH: Israel is backing various Kurdish groups. Both among the Iraqi Kurds as well as the P.J.A.K. among the Iranian Kurds. For Israel that have a long history of supporting non-Arab countries in an effort to divide the Arab world so they supported the Shah of Iran, Hali Salasi in Ethiopia. Turkey, they were allied in Turkey for many years and they see trying to use the Kurds in the same way. You have Israeli security officials training the guards at the Arabial Airport in northern Iraq. You have training of special anti-terrorism squads. I think they're working with P.J.A.K. although this is all denied by P.J.A.K. and the Israelis are also playing a very dangerous game because they are intervening in the affairs of Iraq and causing a great deal of trouble both for Iran and now they're outs with Turkey who was their long-time ally....."

"BAGHDAD (AP) - Two Americans, a contractor [mercenary] and a soldier, were killed in a rocket attack on the heavy guarded Green Zone on Tuesday, according to statements from the U.S. Embassy and the military.

Five other people were wounded, one contractor [mercenary] who was seriously hurt and three with slight wounds. A second soldier also was wounded in the attack, but the military did not give a condition.

Insurgents and militia fighters routinely fire rockets and mortars into the Green Zone, the nominally secure area in central Baghdad that is site of the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government and parliament. The attacks seldom cause casualties or damage because they are poorly aimed and the zone contains much open space....."

Hamas adopts 'ambiguity policy' on peace initiative

"Hamas will refrain from expressing its views on the Arab Peace Initiative that members of the Arab League, including the Palestinian Authority, are expected to support during a summit in Riyadh Wednesday.

In discussions with Haaretz Tuesday, a number of leading Hamas figures in the Gaza Strip revealed that the organization will adopt a policy of ambiguity on its stance vis-a-vis the peace initiative.However, senior Hamas officials admitted that they are opposed to parts of the initiative relating to a peace agreement with Israel or its recognition.

Palestinian sources said Tuesday that Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal has promised Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah not to disrupt the decisions of the summit.

The same sources said that the policy of ambiguity stems from concerns that open opposition to the initiative, which is a revived version of the Saudi initiative approved at the 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut, will cause friction between Hamas and the Saudis. The initiative offers Israel normalization of relations with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal to 1967 lines and a negotiated settlement to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Israel and the United States have not rejected the initiative but expressed reservations on such Israeli red line issues as the refugees problem. When asked whether Hamas will accept the initiative, senior officials in the group said they reject some of its principles.

The spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament, Salah al-Bardawil, told Haaretz, "we will not agree to recognition of Israel or peace with it [as it appears in the initiative]. We have no problem with the part of the initiative that calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and the right of refugees to return."

Bardawil told Haaretz that Meshal had promised to Saudi King Adbullah that Hamas will work with the Arab consensus view, but "we cannot recognize Israel or agree to peace and normalization."

Meshal called on Arab leaders participating in the summit not to make concessions on refugees and the Palestinians' right to defend themselves, according to Saudi media.

"Meshal called on Arab leaders meeting in Riyadh to adopt a strategy based on the right to self-defense," the official Saudi news agency SPA said. "He said that conceding legitimate rights such as the right of return and the Palestinian people's right to protection was unacceptable," the report added.

Meshal spoke to SPA in Algeria, after a visit to Saudi Arabia for talks with officials there on Sunday.

Taking a more severe position, Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, declared Tuesday that "the Hamas positions have not changed in any way. The new government has accepted commitments but our positions remain unchanged[??]."

Another Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhum, told Haaretz that "the issue is not a 'yes' or 'no' by Hamas regarding the initiative. We respect the Arab efforts to attain Palestinian rights and we will act within the Arab consensus. Nonetheless, the Zionist enemy continues to reject the initiative and we will not determine our position in reference to it before it has been accepted."

Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to announce the Palestinian Authority's support for the initiative. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas is not expected to present the unity government's views on the initiative......"

***

Let me know if you can make any sense of this mumbo jumbo. Hamas is acting like a fly caught in a spider web.

The Arab Threat

If you Read Arabic, This is a Must Read

عبد الباري عطوان

28/03/2007

اختتمت السيدة كوندوليزا رايس وزيرة الخارجية الامريكية جولتها المكوكية في المنطقة بتوجيه نصيحة الي الزعماء العرب الذين سيجتمعون اليوم في الرياض بضرورة المصالحة مع الدولة العبرية، والاقدام علي خطوات تطبيعية معها، لطمأنتها، وبالتالي تشجيعها علي المضي قدماً في عملية السلام.
ومن الصعب علينا التكهن بكيفية تعامل القادة العرب مع هذه النصيحة، او التوجيه الامريكي، ولكن ما يمكن استخلاصه من كل ما تسرب عن محادثاتها مع وزراء خارجية دول الرباعية العربية هو وجود مرونة عربية، ولو من قبل محور الاعتدال ، لبدء اتصالات مع حكومة ايهود اولمرت، بعد ان اصبح الجميع يؤمن بأن الخطر الذي يهدد المنطقة قادم من ايران وبرنامجها النووي علي وجه التحديد.
الصحف الاسرائيلية لم تتوقف طوال الاسابيع القلـــيلة الماضية عـــن الحديث عن وجود اتصالات سعوديــة ـ اسرائيلية، وذهب الحال بالصحافي الامريكي توماس فريدمان الي درجة مناشدة العاهل السعودي الملك عبد الله بن عبد العزيز اتباع خطـــــي الرئيس الراحل انور السادات، والذهاب الي القدس المحتلة ومخاطبة البرلمان الاسرائيلي مباشرة لتحقيق المصالحة التاريخية بين العرب والاسرائيليين، وتحقيق التسوية التي تنهي الصراع بينهما الي الأبد.
السيدة رايس لا تنطق عن هوي، وانما تستند الي سوابق عربية، فتحت ذريعة طمأنة اسرائيل وتشجيعها للمضي قدماً في عملية السلام، اقامت عدة دول عربية علاقات دبلوماسية، وفتحت سفارات ومكاتب تجارية في عواصمها، ولكن جاءت النتائج مخيبة للآمال كلياً، فقد ترسخ التطبيع، دون ان يحدث اي تقدم علي صعيد السلام، والأكثر من ذلك ان الاطمئنان الذي حصلت عليه الدولة العبرية من جراء هذا الكرم العربي، شجعها علي بناء المزيد من المستوطنات، واعادة احتلال الضفة الغربية، وارتكاب مجازر اكثر فظاعة في جنين وبيت حانون ورفح ونابلس.
القمة العربية لن تقدم علي تعديل مبادرة السلام التي تبنتها قمة بيروت عام 2002، حتي تتجاوب مع المطالب الاسرائيلية في اسقاط اهم بندين فيها، وهما حق العودة ومنع توطين اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في الدول التي يقيمون فيها مثل الاردن ولبنان وسورية، ولكنها، اي القمة، ستعمل علي الالتفاف حول هاتين المسألتين، بطريقة او بأخري.
فإحياء مبادرة السلام العربية، بعد خمسة اعوام من الموات، وفي مثل هذا التوقيت بالذات، هو امر يثير الريبة والشك، خاصة بعد اعلان اكثر من وزير خارجية عربي، بينهم السيد احمد ابو الغيط، ان هذه المبادرة هي اطار للسلام يمكن ان يكون اساساً للتفاوض من اجل حل القضية الفلسطينية.
فاطار السلام قابل للتعديل، والأخذ والرد، عندما تبدأ المفاوضات، ونحن نعرف ان الطرف الاسرائيلي هو الأكثر مهارة في المساومة، وفرض صياغات مبهمة للمعاهدات او للحدود، وثقوب اتفاقات اوسلو الكثيرة هي المثال الأبرز في هذا الخصوص.
مسؤول كبير يمثل احدي دول اللجنة الرباعية العربية قال لي شخصياً إن هناك ثلاثة ملفات رئيسية مطروحة امام القمة العربية، هي النزاع العربي ـ الاسرائيلي، والوضع المتفجر في العراق، والبرنامج النووي الايراني. واعترف بأن الملف الاول اي الفلسطيني هو اسهلها واقلها تعقيداً، ولهذا يمكن ان يتم البدء في التعامل معه، بعدها يتم الانتقال الي الملف العــراقي ثم الملف الايراني.
سهولة الملف الفلسطيني المفاجئة هذه تعود الي أمرين اساسيين، الاول هو عدم وجود قيادة فلسطينية قوية، وترويض حركة حماس من خلال ادخالها حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، وبيت الطاعة العربي عبر بوابة اتفاق مكة ، والأمر الثاني اتفاق محور المعتدلين العرب علي التضحية بهذه القضية وتقديم تنازلات كبيرة بشأنها، من اجل الدخول في شراكة امنية وعسكرية مع الدولة العبرية لخوض حرب مشتركة للتخلص من التهديد النووي الايراني.
فليس من قبيل الصدفة ان يتم تجويع الشعب الفلسطيني لأكثر من عام بوقف الرواتب والمساعدات عنه، ومشاركة الدول العربية بـحماس غير معهود في هذا الحصار المالي الظالم. فالهدف هو تيئيسه وإذلاله، ودفعه للقبول بأي شيء بما في ذلك التنازل عن حق العودة.
فالحكومة الفلسطينية الجديدة ليست معنية بالمفاوضات، ولا بدعم المقاومة، وانما بكيفية كسر الحصار، فالهدف الاساسي من تشكيلها هو كيفية استئناف ضخ المساعدات العربية والدولية لموظفي السلطة، ونيل الاعتراف الامريكي والاوروبي بها. ومن اللافت ان حركة حماس دخلت هذه المصيدة، واصبحت المحلل لمثل هذا التوجه المرسوم بعناية من قبل الولايات المتحدة واسرائيل وبعض الدول العربية.
السيدة رايس اكدت علي هذه المسألة بوضوح عندما نجحت في ترتيب لقاءات دورية بين السيد محمود عباس رئيس السلطة، وايهود اولمرت رئيس الوزراء الاسرائيلي، تبحث في القضايا الامنية والانسانية فقط، اما قضايا الحل النهائي والجدار العنصري العازل، والتوسع الاستيطاني وخنق القدس، فعليها ان تنتظر ريثما يهدأ غبار الحرب القادمة ضد ايران، وتحصل الولايات المتحدة علي ما تريد، وتغير النظام في طهران مثلما غيرت النظام في العراق، ولكل حادث حديث بعد ذلك.
اللقاءات المنتظرة، او المتفق عليها بين عباس واولمرت برعاية امريكية، هي بهدف الايحاء بان القضية الفلسطينية علي طريق الحل، مما سيسهل، او سيوفر الغطاء، للقاءات عربية علنية مع المسؤولين الاسرائيليين، وخاصة بين مسؤولين عرب في دول لم تقم علاقات مع تل ابيب مثل المملكة العربية السعودية ودول الخليج.
القمة العربية الحالية ربما تدخل التاريخ كقمة تشريع التطبيع، وتأكيد الزعامة السعودية للمنطقة بعدما تخلت عنها مصر طوعاً، وانتهت منافسة العراق لعدة عقود، واصبحت القيادة السورية تسعي جاهدة لنيل الرضي السعودي، او تجنب العزلة الخليجية.
تأكيد الزعامة السعودية للعرب علي درجة كبيرة من الاهمية، لانه يعني توفير الغطاء السني العربي والاسلامي لأي ضربة امريكية قادمة وشبه مؤكدة لايران، لان السعودية ستكون الشريك الاساسي فيها، مثلما كان حالها في كل الحروب الامريكية في المنطقة ابتداء من حربي افغانستان الاولي ضد السوفييت، والثانية ضد الارهاب وانتهاء بحربي امريكا ضد العراق، لتحرير الكويت اولاً، واطاحة النظام البعثي الوطني ثانياً.
ما زلنا، وسنظل نعتقد ان هذه القمة هي اخطر القمم العربية، او واحدة من اخطرها علي الاقل، ومثلما غيرت قمة القاهرة في اب (اغسطس) عام 1990 وجه المنطقة، واغرقتها في الفوضي والحروب الاهلية وادخلتها تحت الهيمنة الامريكية، فان هذه القمة قد تكرس الاهداف نفسها، وتضيف اليها تقسيم العالم الاسلامي الي معسكرين احدهما سني وآخر شيعي، وتمزق الدول القطرية نفسها، وتغرقها في حروب اهلية علي هذا الأساس

Hamas: We support Arab consensus that insists on Palestinian inalienable rights

"DAMAASCUS, (PIC)-- Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, the Hamas deputy political bureau chairman, on Tuesday stressed that his Movement backed any Arab consensus that insists on the Palestinian people's inalienable rights.

He expressed optimism that the Riyadh summit would adopt practical steps to break the "unjust" siege imposed on the Palestinian people.

Abu Marzouk, in a statement to the PIC on the eve of the Arab summit, said that Palestine is the Arabs' "central question" and thus they must shoulder their responsibility in this regard.

He urged the Arab leaders to live up to their commitments voiced during the Khartoum summit last year, and asked them to pressure the European countries into lifting the "unethical and inhuman" siege imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Hams leader said that the Arab summit should also find an urgent solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in Iraq, who are the target of daily murders, kidnap and persecution.

Abu Marzouk urged the Arab countries to give up the policy of free concessions that only brought about "disasters" to peoples in the region."

***

More hot air. The Palestinian tragedy is that these "leaders" are still pinning their hopes on Arab puppets. Nothing has been learned in about 90 years.

The Arab League and "Reforms"

By Ian Bremmer
Asia Times

"......Whatever the case, the well-orchestrated Iranian "surround and seizure" had been planned for some time. It strikes me as a response to the United States holding Iranian diplomats taken in Irbil several months ago - a deliberate and carefully calibrated escalation, with very limited risk for an outbreak of hostilities. Hence the extraordinary and high-level Iranian military presence quickly marshaled to the scene......

The move further confirms that Tehran is not looking for a "diplomatic out". Rather, it is sending a message to the international community that Iran is prepared for a fight if necessary and that its only remaining options are increasingly unpalatable.

The decision to take British (rather than American) hostages suggests that Tehran does not intend to release them immediately (though certainly they will remain safe and well looked after), but rather to use them as leverage for negotiations with British diplomats. The lack of direct channels of negotiations between Iran and the United States would have precluded this option with US soldiers and could have led to significant retaliation against Iran.

The most likely next step is for Iran to demand the release of its captured diplomats, and conceivably of its government property, in Iraqi territory. That's an unlikely outcome. The incident has the capacity to cool significantly British willingness to support efforts at continued negotiations with Iran on the nuclear conflict, as well as end Iranian participation in the broader "contact group" with the United States and Britain (among others) on Iraq......

The importance of that statement, given International Atomic Energy Agency documentation that Iran's nuclear program is progressing, is that it provides greater justification for broader provocative moves against the Islamic Republic and plays into the Israeli argument for the need for an attack.

I still see Israeli security concerns as the most significant driver of any likely military action. A series of Israeli war drills last week, including simulated missile attacks on Israeli urban centers and on the main Tel Aviv power station, are particularly noteworthy......."

Sewage 'tsunami' kills four in Gaza

"A spewing river of sewage and mud that erupted after an earth embankment around a cesspool collapsed has killed at least four people and forced residents to flee a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Dozens of residents of Umm Naser were still unaccounted for after the sewage knocked down many makeshift homes, officials said.

Hani al-Qawasmi, the Palestinian interior minister, who rushed to the village to survey the damage, came under attack from angry armed men who fired shots over his head, local witnesses said.

Al-Qawasmi was driven to safety in a police car.

A local official blamed shoddy infrastructure in the village of 3,000 for the disaster.


Muawiya Hassanin of the Palestinian health ministry said a 70-year-old woman, four-year-old boy and a man had died in the sudden flood.

Submerged

Another 25 people were injured and at least 25 houses completely submerged.

Ziad Abu Farya, head of the village council, described the scene as "our tsunami".

Fadel Kawash, head of the Palestinian water authority, said that the level of sewage in the pool had increased over the past few days, creeping up the earth embankments around the pool until one collapsed, "causing the sewage to pour towards the village".

Angry residents drove reporters out of the area and mobbed government officials.

"We lost everything. Everything was covered by the flood. It's a disaster," said Amina Afif, 65, whose small shack was destroyed."










***

"Interior Minister"....."Health Minister"....."Palestinian Authority"......
What a bunch of crap! The locals know that better than those dressed in three-piece suits and jetting around from capital to capital.

The question is:

Do you believe that Arab summit meetings contribute to solving the region's problems?

With over 2,500 responding so far, 93% said no.

"The old-new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayyad, took advantage of last weekend, before the new Palestinian unity government was sworn in, to say "farewell" to his Israeli colleagues. In effect, already at the end of February, when Fayyad held talks with senior Israeli officials at the Finance and Foreign Ministries, he was aware that by joining a government which includes Hamas, he - the Palestinian politician most esteemed in the West - would be added to the growing list of Palestinians Israel is boycotting. "I very much enjoyed working with you," Fayyad told one senior Israeli official during that weekend. "It is a shame that we will not be able to continue talking. I can only hope that this will change in the future."

Fayyad was not the only one who regretted the end of contacts. Many Israelis, both senior and less so, were sorry to see him leave. Everyone who met him in the past few years was enchanted by him. In Jerusalem, Washington, Paris, London and many other capitals, Fayyad became the ultimate Palestinian "icon," the ideal partner. Tzipi Livni, Ephraim Sneh and other Israeli politicians enjoyed sitting and talking with him in the captivating garden of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, or on the terrace of the King David Hotel, in the city's west. Fayyad is the only Palestinian in whose hands they were prepared to place hundreds of millions of dollars in the belief that these monies would indeed be used to pay salaries.

Fayyad's close relationship with the Israeli establishment can be gauged from the following story. About two years ago, the daughter of Dov Weisglass, who was then the head of the Prime Minister's Bureau, got married. Fayyad was also invited and until today he enjoys a warm relationship with Weisglass. When the seating arrangement was set, Fayyad was placed next to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. The two had a long conversation between the end of the "chuppah" and the start of the refreshments.

But the best evidence of his status in Israel was the invitation he received to deliver an address at the Herzliya Conference last January. Fayyad was thus granted entry to the meeting place of Israel's economic and political elite via the front door. "I know that it was at this conference that they announced the disengagement plan, a move which perhaps had the greatest influence on the Palestinians' lives in the past few years," he said in his opening remarks. "I was invited to speak about economics but I actually prefer to speak to you about politics." During the next half hour, Fayyad outlined his political philosophy. The audience, which was composed of senior figures in the economy, listened to him attentively......

He was on his way to a brilliant business career when the person considered to be his greatest patron intervened - then national security adviser and today U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When the Israel Defense Forces' Operation Defensive Shield was over, pressure mounted on Yasser Arafat to implement reforms. As a result, the new job of PA finance minister was set up.....

Fayyad also left Likud MK Silvan Shalom with a relatively positive impression. "We found him easy to deal with and Ariel Sharon believed that if money is being transferred to the Palestinians then at least it should go directly to him," he says.....

Israeli diplomats say that since it became clear that Fayyad will return to the finance portfolio, their European counterparts have been beside themselves. "They are all just waiting for the moment when they can meet him," one senior foreign ministry official said. "All we hear from them is 'Fayyad, Fayyad, Fayyad.'" Israel's former ambassador to Washington, Danny Ayalon, who spent quite a bit of time with Fayyad, tries to explain the phenomenon: "He is the Palestinian figure with the most prestige in the West; they consider him to be someone who can speak their language. The unlimited credit he has earned from the Americans is what gives him his power."

Why do Israelis feel so comfortable with him? Senior political officials, Knesset members and cabinet ministers who have met him, explain that Fayyad simply does not resemble any other Palestinian political figure. "He is the classic example of a Palestinian who has spent a great deal of time in the West and has acquired Western behavior and values," a senior Israeli official says. "He is a very straight person. His directness is surprising. There are no games or pretenses with him. Quite a few Palestinians immediately begin with a speech about the occupation just so they can feel good about themselves. With him, it's not like that. Obviously he is not satisfied with the occupation but one doesn't hear the standard slogans from him. You sit down and talk with him to the point."....."

I will post his earth-shaking words in English as soon as a link is available.

قال إن القادة العرب سيتخذون مواقف لصالح القضية
مشعل: قمة الرياض ستكون فرصة وفاق فلسطيني -عربي للدفاع عن حقوق الفلسطينيين

"اعتبر خالد مشعل، رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"، أن القمة العربية في الرياض، التي تبدأ أعمالها غداً الأربعاء، ستكون " فرصة وفاق فلسطيني - عربي" للسعي للدفاع عن حقوق الشعب الفلسطيني، مجدداً تمسك الحركة باتفاق مكة.

وأعرب مشعل، الذي تحدّث خلال المؤتمر الخامس لمؤسسة القدس العالمية المنعقد في الجزائر العاصمة، عن ثقته بأن القمة العربية في الرياض ستخرج بنتائج إيجابية تصب في صالح القضية الفلسطينية، مؤكداً على أنه "ليس هناك مشروع عربي لتعديل المبادرة العربية التي تبنتها قمة بيروت سنة 2002".

وكشف النقاب عن أن حركة "حماس" تقدّمت، خلال مشاوراتها في المملكة العربية السعودية، بمشروع من أجل إنقاذ اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في العراق، الذين يتعرّضون للقتل والاختطاف والتشريد.

وقال: "إن انعقاد القمة في الرياض يبشر بالخير بعدما كللت رعاية المملكة العربية السعودية باتفاق مكة الذي مهد الطريق لإنجاز حكومة وحدة وطنية فلسطينية وحقن الدماء بين أبناء حركتي حماس و فتح"، لافتاً الانتباه إلى أن هذه "العوامل ستجعل القمة العربية تتمخض عن مواقف وقرارات إيجابية".

وأشار القيادي الفلسطيني البارز إلى أن حركة "حماس" تتطلع إلى دعم الحكومة الفلسطينية، وأن
"يقف القادة العرب موقفاً شجاعاً وجريئاً يرمي إلى توحيد الصف العربي"، داعياً القادة العرب إلى "كسر عملي للحصار العربي على الفلسطينيين"، ومشدداً في الوقت ذاته على ضرورة اتخاذ قرار عربي في قمة الرياض "يعترف بحكومة الوحدة الفلسطينية الجديدة ويتعامل مع وزرائها ويساعد الشعب الفلسطيني".

وأوضح رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة "حماس" أن القمة العربية ستُعقد في خضم العديد من المتغيرات، "وبإمكانها أن تكون فرصة لبناء استراتيجية عربية إسلامية جديدة أساسها الوفاق الفلسطيني الذي تشكلت على أساسه الوحدة الوطنية".

وتابع حديثه بالقول: "آن للعرب رسم استراتيجية وتحديد المطالب واحترام الحقوق للحراك السياسي، حيث لا نقبل التنازلات ويجب عليهم إيقاف مسلسل التنازلات، فلا تنازل عن القدس ولا عن الأقصى ولا عن حق العودة".

Mishaal: Riyadh summit to boost the Palestine cause

"ALGIERS, (PIC)-- Khaled Mishaal, the Hamas supreme political leader, has said that the Arab summit in Riyadh scheduled to open on Wednesday would be an opportunity to reach an Arab-Palestinian understanding on means of defending the Palestinian people's rights.

Mishaal, who was speaking Tuesday before the fifth congress of the international Quds foundation held in the Algerian capital, expressed confidence that the summit would end up with positive results in favor of the Palestine cause.

He revealed that during his consultations in Riyadh over the past couple of days he tabled a project to save the Palestinian refugees in Iraq who are the target of constant persecution.

The Hamas leader urged the Arab heads of state to practically break the Arab siege on the Palestinians, stressing that the summit should recognize the new PA unity government and should deal with all its ministers.

It is about time for the Arabs to adopt a concrete strategy that would not accept compromises, Mishaal highlighted, asserting that there should be no concessions over the issues of Jerusalem, the Aqsa or the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees."

***

What a load of horse manure! I hope the windbag realizes what kind of Usraeli stooges he is pinning his hopes on.

Video, Domhan Eile Media Project, 27 March 2007

"Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza for 39 years. In 1948, 900,000 Palestinians were expelled from present day Israel. Their 6 million descendants live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and the surrounding Arab States. An 8-12 meter high wall stretches 622km annexing 13.1% of the West Bank. Seven students and a camera visited the West Bank for three weeks in June 2006. They drove around the West Bank, spending time in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Aida Camp, Jenin, Ramallah among other areas. This is a glimpse of what they encountered."



Part One:
Welcome To Inspection Point

Part Two:
Welcome To Inspection Point

Part Three:
Welcome To Inspection Point

The Saudi Mafia (A.K.A. the royal family) is Now in Charge of Arab Politics and Press
Think of it as Usrael With Arab Headgear

By Kurt Nimmo

"Call it déjà vu, Lebanon style. “Iran kidnaps Marines at gunpoint,” declares the Belfast Telegraph, as if the Royal Marines captured on the Iranian side of the Shatt al-Arab waterway were grabbed while on an afternoon stroll in Seaforth. Terri Judd, aboard HMS Cornwall in the Persian Gulf, tells us the marines were “overpowered and taken into Iranian national waters,” same as Hezbollah attacked Israel last summer, capturing two Israeli soldiers, sparking Israel’s attack on the country. However, as we know, the soldiers were captured at the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon’s southern territory, a fact initially reported by at least a few members of the corporate media, that is until they were handed the approved script.....

Meanwhile, the incident is left to roil and baste in the corporate media, an obedient tool for neocons and neolibs alike. “British officials were wary of drawing the conclusion that the incident was a deliberate provocation by Tehran, which denies Western accusations that its nuclear energy program is a front for developing atomic arms,” the Post continues. As usual, in Bushzarro world, up is down and black is white. In fact, the Brits appear to be guilty of staging “a deliberate provocation” by taunting the Iranians, who are rightfully paranoid of having their cities and populace shock and awed by the neocons."

Musharaf Will Attend the Arab Summit

This is interesting and revealing of the new regional role intended for Pakistan. General Musharaf was invited by the Saudi king to attend the Arab summit in Riyadh. This will be the first time a Pakistani leader (who is non-Arab) attends an Arab summit. He is expected to hold discussions with Arab leaders concerning the Palestinian "peace initiative." Musharaf has been talking for the past 3 months about a new initiative, without giving details.

Musharaf is now an important part of the axis of "moderate Arabs." My suggestion is to invite Olmert to the summit; he can't be much worse than many who are attending.

"يحضر الرئيس الباكستاني برويز مشرف القمة العربية في الرياض يوم الأربعاء, ليكون أول رئيس باكستاني يحل ضيفا خاصا عليها بدعوة من الملك السعودي عبد الله بن عبد العزيز.

ويتوقع أن تكون لمشرف محادثات مع قادة عرب لا سيما حول ما يتعلق بالقضية الفلسطينية, إذ يتحدث الرئيس الباكستاني منذ أكثر من ثلاثة أشهر عن مبادرة جديدة للسلام بالشرق الأوسط دون كشف مضمونها.
........"

Ban Ki-Moon in Baghdad

Beginning of the Capitulation of Hamas. This is exactly what I was referring to in an earlier post: Hamas will hide behind vague language and declarations, all in the name of "Arab unity," of course. I will post the English version of this serious declaration by Hamas, as soon as it is available. In a nutshell it says that Hamas is happy with the "Arab consensus" and it will not oppose it! In the name of preserving "national unity" Hamas is prepared to abandon the essential Palestinian right and the core of the struggle: The right of return.

This is disastrous and proves that all my suspicions were justified. This is Nakba II; thank you Hamas and thank you "national unity" in surrender!

***
Note: The Arabic heading shown above is the original heading used by the PIC site. Now, they have modified it to "الرشق: "حماس" منسجمة مع الموقف العربي عامة بما يحقق أهداف ومصالح الشعب الفلسطيني" which means that Hamas is in GENERAL agreement with the Arab consensus, TO THE EXTENT IT FULFILLS PALESTINIAN GOALS AND INTERESTS. Very interesting backpedaling by Hamas. I promise you more of these word games, stay tuned!

"دمشق – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أكد عزت الرشق، عضو المكتب السياسي لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"، أن الحركة "منسجمة مع الموقف العربي عامة، ولا يمكن أن تخرج عن حالة الإجماع"، مشدداً على تمسّك الحركة ببرنامج حكومة الوحدة الوطنية وما نجم عن اتفاق مكة.

وأوضح الرشق في تصريحات لـ "قدس برس" أن زيارة خالد مشعل، رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة "حماس"، الثانية خلال أسبوع واحد إلى العاصمة السعودية الرياض جاءت في إطار الانسجام مع الموقف العربي.

وقال: "زيارة خالد مشعل إلى الرياض تأتي بعد أقل من أسبوع من الزيارة الأولى، وتهدف إلى استمرار التشاور مع المسؤولين السعوديين فيما يتعلق بالقمة العربية في الرياض، حيث تم الإطلاع على ما تم إنجازه من أعمال القمة، وما يتعلق منها بالقضية الفلسطينية وإبداء الملاحظات اللازمة".

ونفى الرشق أن تكون الزيارة جاءت استجابة لضغوط أمريكية أو سعودية، وقال: "لا توجد ضغوط أمريكية أو سعودية على حماس، والمملكة العربية السعودية رعت اتفاق مكة المكرمة، وهي ملتزمة به، كما أن حماس متمسكة به، والحكومة الفلسطينية متمسكة بالبرنامج السياسي وبخطاب التكليف الذي تم إعلانه على أساس وثيقة الوفاق الوطني، ولذلك لسنا بحاجة إلى أي جهود إضافية".

وفيما يتعلق بموقف حركة "حماس" من المبادرة العربية، وما إذا كانت توافق عليها أم لا، قال الرشق: "المبادرة العربية موجودة منذ سنوات، ويتم التأكيد عليها في كل قمة، وليس هناك أي جديد بشأنها، ونحن في حماس منسجمون مع الموقف العربي وحريصون على التمسك به ولا يمكن أن نخرج عن الإجماع العربي، ومع ذلك نعتقد أن ما تم إنجازه في اتفاق مكة المكرمة يعتبر أكثر من كاف".

English Version of Original Statement:

Resheq: Hamas' position in harmony with the overall Arab position

"Damascus- Ezzet Al-Resheq, political bureau member of the Hamas Movement, on Monday asserted that the Movement's position was in harmony with the overall Arab position.

Resheq, in a statement to Quds Press, said that Hamas would always adhere to the Arab consensus.

He explained that Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal's visit to Riyadh, the second in less than a week to the Saudi capital, fell in line with this stand.

The Hamas leader affirmed that Mishaal's discussion with Saudi officials aimed at maintaining consultations prior to the Arab summit scheduled to open in Riyadh after two days.

He said that preparations for the summit were reviewed especially concerning the Palestine cause.

Resheq denied that Mishaal's visit to Riyadh was in response to American or Saudi pressures, adding that no such pressures were exercised on Hamas.

He noted that the Makkah agreement was reached under Saudi patronage, and asserted that Hamas was abiding by that agreement that furnished the way before formation of a Palestinian national unity government."

By Gideon Levy

"The rules of decorum are binding: Welcome - to the U.S. Secretary of State and United Nations secretary-general, who have come here, and to the German chancellor, who is due next week. But the rules of logic are no less binding, and we must ask: So, why have you come?

All three have declared that they are coming here to further a solution. But this whole show, we must tell them, is no more than a ridiculous masked ball: In their pointless and fruitless visits, they only perpetuate and entrench the conflict that most threatens world peace.

The fact that all three boycott the elected Palestinian prime minister predetermines that there is no chance for progress. This blind trio is looking in the wrong place. If they really wished to contribute, they would have to do two things: meet with Ismail Haniyeh and pressure him to recognize Israel, and meet with Ehud Olmert and pressure him to put an end to the occupation. Without these two elements - nothing will move forward.

It is hard to understand how once again Israel manages to coerce the international community to dance to its tune. After it dragged the world into a futile boycott of Yasser Arafat, it now drags them into a boycott of Haniyeh, and thus only serves the desired aim of the government, which holds the key to ending the conflict: to reject any negotiations......

If it is possible to understand this boycott visit of Condoleezza Rice, the mother of the boycott doctrine, and also perhaps that of Angela Merkel, whose country needs to tread carefully concerning its policies vis-a-vis Israel - it is impossible to understand the boycott on the part of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Who appointed him to boycott an elected prime minister? Was there a decision by the UN General Assembly that the world should boycott the unity government? Is this how an honest broker behaves?

It is no less revolting that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is playing along with this charade. If he were a leader of some standing, he would tell his guests: "Ahlan wa sahlan [welcome] - but no boycotts." And he would say: I also have an intense debate with my prime minister, but that argument needs to be settled with dialogue, not by boycott. You wish to meet with me? Then also meet with Haniyeh. You want to invite me to Washington? Then include my senior partner.

In the absence of a courageous stance, Abbas appears to be a weak leader. Perhaps not a chick, but surely a puppet - just like Israel and the U.S. wish him to be....."

Is it inevitable?

By Justin Raimondo

"The timing of the recent incident in which 15 British sailors were arrested by Iran at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway for purportedly entering Iranian waters couldn't have been more provocative if it had been planned that way. And perhaps it was. The question is, however, who did the planning?

It happened on the eve of a vote in the UN Security Council to impose stricter sanctions on Iran and in the wake of escalating rhetoric from U.S. government officials blaming Iran for anti-occupation activity in Iraq. On top of that, recent events include the kidnapping of Iranian consular officials in Irbil, Kurdistan, by U.S. forces, reports of covert U.S. support for terrorist attacks inside Iran, the "disappearance" of a major Iranian military figure in the elite Revolutionary Guards unit, and suspicions that the Mossad may have had a hand in killing a renowned Iranian nuclear scientist. Add it all up, and there seems little doubt as to who carried out what seems like a brazen provocation......

Laughing at Her Majesty's sailors, who were guarding the civilized world from the pernicious plots of car smugglers, was surely an act of war. After all, isn't a car a "weapon of mass destruction" in present-day Iraq? The Brits weren't going to let the Iranians off the hook quite so easily, and the next day they returned to the same waters to find the same smugglers plying their trade. The British patrol made a beeline for the smugglers, but this time the smugglers didn't run – and the poor naïve Brits walked right into the trap. No sooner had they boarded the vessel than they were surrounded on all sides by Iranian gunboats. Last anybody heard of their fate, they were in Tehran and the Iranians were talking about putting them on trial for espionage.......

Both Ron Paul and Antiwar.com columnist Philip Giraldi have warned about the likelihood of a Gulf of Tonkin-style incident in the Persian Gulf, and their predictions have, sadly, proved all too accurate. That it involves the British, not the Americans, is a double victory for the on-to-Tehran crowd: the war-weary Brits, who recently announced the withdrawal of their troops from southern Iraq, will presumably be dragged along in the wake of the coming U.S. military assault as their sailors are paraded before the cameras in Tehran. Once again, "coalition" forces are about to take down a Middle Eastern government, and they are already on the move......

On the ground in the Middle East, the forces that will engage in a mighty clash of civilizations are gathering – while, on the home front, the Israel Lobby is preparing the ground by softening up any possible opposition. This means zeroing in on the Democratic Party, lining up the major presidential candidates in support of a strike against Tehran, and smearing any and all war opponents as anti-Semitic enablers of the nuclear-armed, Holocaust-denying Iranian regime......"

How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America

By Zbigniew Brzezinski

".....The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan......."

Looking for Peace

"Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israeli TV has described the active diplomatic movement in the region as preparation for a great political step. Israeli TV Channel Two wondered if the audience still remembers what the meaning of the word peace is, and asked if Israel is at the gates of a huge political process. The fundamental issue is Tel Aviv's acceptance of the Saudi initiative, as Israelis do not call the initiative the Arab initiative.

According to a report presented by the TV, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the region in order to mediate between Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas, and between Olmert and the Arab moderate leaders. According to the report, the US is supporting the moderate Arab countries more than in any previous stage. It added that the American efforts are strong and deep in order to remove the Saudi initiative's paragraph which speaks about the Palestinian refugees' right of return.

The TV said that US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, David Welch, said that the atmosphere is very positive in spite of reports to the contrary. Israeli political analyst Ehud Ya'ari said that the politicians in the US, Israel and the Arab countries are 'cooking up a big political meal', but he was not sure if they will be able to translate that into practical steps and 'get the region out of the state of tension'.

in an interview with the head of security and foreign affairs in the Israeli Knesset, Tsahi Hanegbi, Israeli Channel Ten and other analysts said that the visits of Rice and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the same time to the region was not a coincidence.

Hanigbi spoke positively about the Saudi initiative and the need to cancel the right of return in it. He also pointed out that Israel will do its best to make the Roadmap and Bush's vision as the alternative to the Saudi initiative. In spite of that, he also said that Israel will not withdraw to the 1967 borders. He added that even the Israeli leftists are not calling for that any more.

When he was told by one of the journalists that therefore it appears that Israel is dealing with the initiative from a tactical point of view, Hanigbi retorted that, "let us use dynamic instead of tactical." "

An Important Development: This is a Bombshell
Contributed by Lucia

"RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia's foreign minister suggested Monday that Arab leaders would be willing to consider changes in their 2002 peace offer to Israel to make it "compatible" with new developments.

The statement from Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal came as Arab League foreign ministers convened Monday to prepare for a leaders summit later this week, expected to focus on how to revive Middle East peace efforts. Arab leaders have, until now, publicly rejected Israeli calls for them to make changes to the 2002 Arab peace offer.

But al-Faisal, in his opening remarks, suggested change was likely.

"It is expected from us to take notice of new developments, which require additions and developments in whatever is offered for our leaders about the issues and problems — in order for their resolutions to be compatible with what is dire and new," al-Faisal said.

"The kingdom is keen that this summit should come out with one Arab voice toward issues of destiny, and in particular the Palestinian issue," he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is believed to have been strongly pushing the Arab countries to offer some hope of changes in the plan, during her tour of the Mideast this week.

In signs that peace efforts were gathering steam, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday also welcomed the idea of a regional summit with moderate Arab leaders, saying he "would not hesitate" to attend.

But Olmert, who spoke after meetings Sunday with Rice, denied press reports that a major summit was in the works.

Several other Arab diplomats said privately Monday that Arab leaders were seeking fresh ways to moderate their position without being seen as giving in to Israeli or American demands to change the 2002 offer.

The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia would be proposing "a repackaging" of the deal.

Under that repackaging, the Arab leaders would insist that Israel accept the 2002 Arab peace plan in principle before returning to any talks, but would also agree that the Palestinians and Arab countries would be ready to soften their conditions once negotiations began, the diplomats said.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who spoke Monday at the foreign ministers' meeting in addition to al-Faisal, did not insist in his speech that the plan could never be changed. That was viewed as significant.

Israel in the past has rejected the plan outright. But Olmert said last week that it could provide the basis for renewed talks with Arab moderates — a sign of Israel's tentative interest as other avenues toward peace have faltered recently.

The offer, initiated in 2002 by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for full Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It also calls for setting up a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to former homes in Israel.

Israel rejects full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and it strongly opposes the influx of large numbers of Palestinian refugees into the Jewish state.

Al-Faisal said the recent formation of a Palestinian coalition government between the militant Hamas and the more moderate Fatah had "enhanced the chances for a unified Arab position based on the Arab peace initiative as the best framework to reach a comprehensive and just solution."

"The more clear the Arab position will be in this regard, the more chances will be for this initiative to be adopted by the international community ... and the possibility to enter into negotiations," he said."

***

I am afraid that 'Atwan's fears are well justified and this upcoming summit is likely to be the most disastrous from the Palestinian perspective. But you will not be able to tell from the summit pronouncements. With fluffy Arabic language statements, the resolutions will be presented as "major victory." The "unity government" and Hamas will go along with this charade and betrayal.

To all Palestinians: This time DO NOT CELEBRATE. Prepare for major protests against this betrayal by your quisling government and its masters in Riyadh.

An Important Comment
(Unfortunately only available in Arabic)
See my translation below.

عبد الباري عطوان

26/03/2007

في عام 2002 اي بعد عام من احداث الحادي عشر من ايلول (سبتمبر)، وقبل عام من الغزو الامريكي للعراق، عرض الصحافي الامريكي توماس فريدمان علي الملك (الامير) عبد الله بن عبد العزيز القيام بتحرك سياسي يعيد العلاقات الامريكية ـ السعودية الي سابق عهدها، ويزيل ما علق بها من شوائب بسبب مشاركة سعوديين في الهجوم علي مركز التجارة العالمي. فريدمان اقترح ان يكون هذا التحرك عبر مبادرة سلام مع اسرائيل، اي الوصول الي القلب الامريكي عبر البوابة الاسرائيلية.
الملك عبد الله تجاوب مع هذا الاقتراح، واستمع الي نصائح فريدمان، واصدر مبادرة حملت اسمه عرض فيها التطبيع الكامل مع الدولة العبرية مقابل انسحابها الكامل من الاراضي المحتلة. وقد لقيت ترحيبا داخل الادارة الامريكية وصناع القرار فيها، من المحافظين الجدد، ومعظمهم يهود، خاصة انها لم تتحدث عن حق العودة للاجئين الفلسطينيين الذي هو لب القضية العربية.
توماس فريدمان كتب مقالا في صحيفة نيويورك تايمز نشرته السبت الماضي ناشد فيه الملك عبد الله مرة اخري ان يعزز قيادته للعالمين العربي والاسلامي، مع افول نجم القاهرة ورئيسها، بالاقدام علي مبادرة جديدة تحقق اختراقا مهما يحقق السلام الكامل والنهائي بين العرب والاسرائيليين.
فريدمان لخص مبادرته بقيام الملك عبد الله بشد الرحال الي فلسطين المحتلة بعد انتهاء القمة العربية المقبلة التي ستعقد في الرياض يوم الاربعاء المقبل، متبعا خطي الرئيس الراحل انور السادات تكون محطته الاولي القدس الشرقية للصلاة في المسجد الاقصي ليؤكد حق العرب والمسلمين فيها، ثم بعد ذلك يتوجه الي رام الله ويخاطب المجلس التشريعي الفلسطيني مؤكدا علي مباديء مبادرته الاولي، اي التطبيع الكامل مقابل الانسحاب الكامل، ثم يتوجه الي يادفاشيم حيث النصب التذكاري لضحايا الهولوكوست من اليهود ليؤكد اعترافه بالمحرقة ويبتعد عن موقف احمدي نجاد رئيس ايران الناكر لها، ثم يختتم زيارته بالمحطة الرابعة والاخيرة فيها اي الكنيست الاسرائيلي.
لا نعرف كيف سيكون رد فعل الملك عبد الله علي هذه المناشدة من قبل صديقه فريدمان، وما اذا كان سيتجاوب معها مثلما تجاوب مع نصائحه الاولي قبل سبع سنوات، ويتبناها علي انها مبادرة جديدة ام انه سيرفض هذه المرة. ولكن ما نعرفه ان فريدمان هذا لا ينطق عن هوي، فهو وثيق الصلة مع صناع القرار في البيت الابيض، وما زال يقيم علاقات وثيقة، ان لم يكن مع الملك عبد الله بن عبد العزيز، فمع مجموعة من المستشارين حوله، وخاصة الامير بندر بين سلطان الرجل القوي في السعودية وامين عام مجلس الامن القومي، والسيد عادل الجبير السفير السعودي في واشنطن.
مناشدة فريدمان هذه تأتي في وقت تتزايد فيه حدة التكهنات حول حدوث لقاءات سرية بين ايهود اولمرت رئيس الوزراء الاسرائيلي ومسؤولين كبار من العائلة الحاكمة السعودية، وتردد اسم الامير بندر بن سلطان علي وجه التحديد اكثر من مرة في هذا الخصوص. وهي لقاءات لم ينفها اولمرت بل انه اكد علي حدوثها بطريقة غير مباشرة لمح الي ان احدها كان مسرحه القصر الملكي الاردني في عمان.
ما يمكن استخلاصه من نصائح فريدمان هذه مجموعة نقاط رئيسية نلخصها علي الشكل التالي:
اولا: ان الطرف الامريكي ما زال يضغط علي الطرف العربي بالذات لتقديم المزيد من التنازلات للاسرائيليين ويركز بالذات علي المملكة العربية السعودية التي باتت الوحيدة التي قبلت بالقيام بالدور القيادي بحكم ثرواتها المالية الضخمة (220 مليار سنويا عوائد نفط) ومكانتها العربية والاسلامية كراعية للاماكن المقدسة.
ثانيا: ان يبدأ التطبيع العربي مع الدولة العبرية من منطلق اثبات حسن النوايا تماما مثلما فعل الرئيس الراحل انور السادات، ويترك الامر بعد ذلك لـ الكرم الاسرائيلي لتقدير هذه الخطوة العربية التطبيعية والتجاوب معها. اي ان يتم التطبيع العربي قبل الانسحاب.
ثالثا: احداث شرخ جديد في العالم الاسلامي، وتصوير العرب علي انهم المتهاونون المفرطون المطبعون، بينما الايرانيون هم المتمسكون بالقضية والحقوق العربية.
رابعا: نسف مبادرة السلام العربية بصيغتها المعتمدة في قمة بيروت عام 2002 واسقاط حق العودة مجددا، وجعل المبادرة السعودية الجديدة المقترحة اساس الحل من خلال اعادة احيائها بصورتها الاساسية التي اقترحها فريدمان واخرجها الامير (الملك) عبد الله بن عبد العزيز من درج مكتبه في حينها.
الملك عبد الله بن عبد العزيز ليس انور السادات، ولا يجب ان يكون، فهو لم يخض حربا مع اسرائيل، وليس لديه اراض محتلة يريد استرجاعها (سيناء في حالة مصر) وفوق هذا وذاك هو خادم الحرمين الشريفين او هكذا يريد ان يخاطبه العالم. فاذا كان الرئيس حسني مبارك، ورغم كل التنازلات التي قدمها لاسرائيل، بما في ذلك استضافة شارون، والتحول الي وسيط نزيه ومحايد في صراعها مع العرب والفلسطينيين، رفض زيارة القدس المحتلة رسميا ومخاطبة الكنيست، فهل يقبل العاهل السعودي بهذه المبادرة؟
السعودية اليوم هي غير السعودية التي نعرفها قبل عشر او عشرين عاما. هذا امر مؤكد، فقد باتت محور الارتكاز الرئيسي للسياسة الامريكية في المنطقة، وتجاوزت حكومتها كل الخطوط الحمراء بما في ذلك مباركة غزو العراق واحتلاله والسماح بانطلاق القوات الغازية من اراضيها وتسليم ارض الرافدين لايران ونفوذها، وهو التسليم الذي تتباكي عليه حاليا. ولن نستغرب اذا ما تجاوبت بشكل او بآخر مع الضغوط الامريكية التي تطالبها بالاقدام علي مبادرة جديدة تتناسب مع الشروط الاسرائيلية.
فاولمرت لا يتوقف عن مغازلة المبادرة السعودية في صورتها الاسرائيلية، والترحيب بها كأساس للمفاوضات، وابداء تحفظاته علي نقطتين اساسيتين اضيفتا اليها في قمة بيروت من قبل الرئيس السوري بشار الاسد، وهما حق العودة للاجئين، ومنع توطين هؤلاء في الدول المضيفة لهم اي سورية والاردن ولبنان تحت اي ظرف من الظروف.
قمة الرياض المقبلة هي واحدة من اخطر القمم العربية ان لم تكن اخطرها، لانها قد تؤسس لاعتراف عربي كامل باسرائيل، وقد توفر الغطاء العربي اللازم للضربات الامريكية المتوقعة لايران في الاشهر المقبلة تماما مثلما فعلت قمة القاهرة في صيف عام 1990 عندما حللت استضافة نصف مليون جندي امريكي علي ارض الجزيرة العربية وتحقيق سابقة المشاركة العسكرية الامريكية ـ العربية لتدمير بلد عربي هو العراق تحت شعار تحرير الكويت .
نضع ايدينا علي قلوبنا هذه الايام، ونخشي ان نري كامب ديفيد عربيا جديدا ينهي القضية العربية الاولي وفق الشروط الاسرائيلية، ففريدمان لا ينطق عن هوي وللأسف الشديد.


***

My Translation of this comment by Abdel Bari Atwan, who is the editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al-'Arabi. He is well informed and his comments are usually substantive.

Friedman (Thomas) and Getting the Saudi King Implicated

In 2002, one year after the 9/11 attack and one year before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Thomas Friedman suggested that the Saudi king Abdullah launch a new diplomatic initiative to restore U.S.-Saudi ties and to remove U.S. hostility since most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. The proposal was in the form of a new Arab peace initiative to Israel; in other words to reach the American heart by way of the Israeli portal.

King Abdullah responded positively to Friedman's proposal and launched what became known as the Abdullah peace initiative. This plan was well received among the neoconservative decision makers in Washington, since it proposed complete Arab normalization with Israel without ever mentioning the Palestinian right of return which is the core issue, as far as the Palestinians are concerned.

Friedman wrote another article which was published by the New York Times last Saturday. In this article he suggested to king Abdullah to undertake a new initiative to solidify his leadership of the Arab and Muslim worlds now that Egypt's influence has waned. He proposed a new breakthrough to accomplish comprehensive and final peace between Israel and all Arab countries. Friedman's proposal is that Abdullah follow Sadat's footsteps and immediately after the upcoming summit in Riyadh. The first stop for king Abdullah would be to pray in the Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. His next stop would be to address the Palestinian parliament in occupied Ramallah where he would reiterate his initiative: Israeli withdrawal in exchange for total normalization. Next he would visit the monument to the Jewish Holocaust at Yad Vashem, to demonstrate his recognition of the event as a contrast to Ahmadinejad's view. Finally Abdullah would address the Israeli Kensett (as Sadat did).

We don't know whether king Abdullah would follow this suggestion from his friend Friedman; however Friedman doesn't just speak out of the blue. He is well-connected to decision makers in the White House and has strong ties, if not directly to king Abdullah then to some of his key advisors. Chief among them is prince Bandar, who is the chief national security advisor and the key decision maker, and the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

This proposal by Friedman comes at a time of increased speculations of high level secret contacts between PM Olmert and prince Bandar. Olmert has not denied the rumors and hinted that the meeting may have taken place in Jordan.

What can be concluded from this Friedman proposal are the following points:

1) The U.S. is still pressuring the Arab side and Saudi Arabia in particular to offer more concessions to Israel. KSA has stepped forward as the key representative of the Arab side.

2) Arab normalization is to proceed before Israeli withdrawals, just as Sadat did. The Arabs are to demonstrate their "good intentions" first and the actual Israel withdrawals are to be left to the generosity of the Israeli side.

3) The introduction of a new schism in the Muslim world by showing the Arabs as reasonable and normalizing while the Iranians as extremists.

4) Demolition of the Arab peace initiative adopted in the Beirut summit of 2002 (which included insistence on the Palestinian right of return) and a return to the Abdullah initiative in response to Friedman, which did not include the right of return.

King Abdullah is not Anwar Sadat and Saudi Arabia is not Egypt with land occupied by Israel, so it is hard to see Abdullah following Friedman's suggestion. Having said this, KSA of today is not KSA of ten or twenty years ago; that is for certain. It has become the pivotal point for U.S. strategy in the area and it has crossed all previous red lines. It blessed the invasion and the occupation of Iraq; it allowed invading U.S. troops to use its territory, therefore it would not be a surprise to see KSA respond to American pressure and comply with Israeli demands.

Olmert is romancing the Saudi initiative (after removing the right of return) and he speaks of its positive elements as a starting point for negotiations.

The upcoming Arab summit will be the most dangerous. It will pave the way for a complete Arab normalization with Israel and it will provide an Arab cover for a military strike on Iran in the coming months. This will be similar to what took place in the Arab summit in Cairo in 1990, when the Arab leaders blessed the stationing of 500,000 U.S. troops in KSA and established the precedent of a U.S.-Arab military alliance to destroy another Arab country (Iraq).

We hold our breath fearing a new Camp David that will liquidate Palestinian rights according to Israeli conditions. Friedman does not speak out of the blue, unfortunately.

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mr. Fish.

"GAZA, (PIC)-- Nemr Hammad, the political advisor of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas was grilled over unwarranted calls to resume security coordination between the PA security apparatuses and Israel.

The spokesman of Hamas in Gaza Strip Fawzi Barhoum deprecated Hammad’s invitation, adding that the call means destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian resistance factions, and assassinating and arresting more Palestinian leaders.

“These are serious statements with the aim to provide the Israeli intelligence apparatuses information on the whereabouts of the Palestinian resistance leaders”, Barhoum underlined.

He even urged the PLC to question Hammad, and to prosecute him if found guilty.

The Islamic Jihad, another influential Palestinian resistance faction, urged the immediate ouster of Hammad from his position, describing his invitation as “irresponsible and unpatriotic”.

According to Khaled Al-Batesh, one of the Islamic Jihad senior political leaders, “Hammad’s statements permit the IOF troops to continue killing more Palestinian people and demolishing more Palestinian homes”.

In statements he made to the Hebrew radio, Hammad championed the resumption of security coordination between PA and Israeli security apparatuses through the office of the PA chief.

According to the Hebrew radio, Hammad also urged Israel’s security apparatuses to furnish Abbas’ office with information on Palestinian resistance cells so as to enable PA security apparatuses attached to Abbas’ office thwart their activities.

In the past, the successive Fatah-led PA governments maintained security coordination with Israel, which killed tens of senior leaders of Palestinians resistance factions.

However, upon the arrival of Hamas to governance last year after wining the legislative elections, such coordination was totally terminated, sparing lives of Palestinian resistance’ leaders and cadres."

***

Celebrate "Palestinian unity" and the PA-Israeli "security coordination," now!

At Riyadh summit, Arab states to propose increasing aid to PA

"Arab governments hope to increase aid to the Palestinians, including channeling more money to the newly formed Palestinian unity government led by the militant group Hamas, according to a document prepared for this week's summit of Arab leaders.

The proposal, expected to be endorsed by Arab leaders later this week, comes as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in the region seeking a common footing with Arab allies on how to revive the stalled Middle East peace process.

Arab diplomats said the aid increase would be aimed at coaxing the militant Hamas movement toward more compromise and would give it equal billing with Western-backed moderates in the Palestinian coalition government.......

That money has so far been sent to the office of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and not to the Hamas-led government. Arab diplomats taking part in Sunday discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said the Arab leaders will decide whether the money should go to the government.

Speaking to reporters Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Saudi al-Faisal confirmed the summit would extend the aid to the Palestinians but did not say whether the money would go directly to the government......

The diplomats said any Arab aid to the government would be channeled through the minister of finance, Salam Fayyad, an internationally respected economist and political independent.

Fayyad, a former World Bank official, is leading Palestinian efforts to end international sanctions imposed a year ago when the Islamic militants of Hamas won an election and set up a government.

The top U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, met Fayyad last week - the United States' first contact with the new Hamas-Fatah coalition and the end of a yearlong diplomatic boycott of the Palestinian government......."

***

There are "good Palestinians" such as the Saudi-imposed "Finance Minister" Fayyad who is close to the Bush Administration and who held the same position when most of the aid to the Palestinians was stolen and embezzled by Abbas' cronies. And there are the "bad Palestinians" who want clean institutions and who insist on their rights. The U.S. refuses to deal with these "bad Palestinians." However, for a few Saudi $ millions more, HAMAS could join the "good Palestinians."

Just think of what you could do with that extra cash, Mr. Habila.

Benjamin Ben Eliezer (accused of killing hundreds of Egyptian POWs): I didn't kill anyone, these were just Palestinians!

"Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) considers the tours of the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in the region to be "unproductive as they have failed to end the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli occupation."

A statement issued by the PFLP stated "American diplomacy in the region before the Arab Summit is an attempt to mislead and deceive."

A spokesman of the PFLP said in the statement that the tour aims to serve the American and the Israeli policies which are facing failure in the region. The spokesman pointed out the failure of US foreign policy in Iraq and in Lebanon, Iran and Palestine.

The statement warns of "attempts to blackmail or exert pressure, practiced by the Israeli and American administrations." It also warns of the "Israeli and American attempts to drag the area into a fierce war, as well as attempts to make Palestinians abandon their rights in their lands including the United Nations Resolution 194 regarding the right of return."

In his statement the spokesman called on the Arab leaders to "stop freely making concessions or counting on the American and Israeli insincere promises which aim to weaken the Arabs."

Islamic Jihad called for Palestinians to "slam the door to Palestine in Condoleezza Rice's face." Islamic Jihad said the US Secretary of State is unwelcome, "especially because her tour is coming ahead the Arab Summit."

The movement stated that "she aims to exert more pressure on the Arab states and is trying to divide the Arabs into extremists and moderates. She is trying to make amendments to the Arab initiative."

The statement issued by Islamic Jihad said "any amendments in this regard will be at the expense of Palestinian rights through omitting the right to return and through giving the Israeli settlements legality and abandoning the Palestinian right to Jerusalem."

The movement warned against the tours made by the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and said that "she doesn’t come to the region with something positive, she only ever comes to serve the American-Israeli interests and plans for the region". "

By Uri Avnery

"INCREDIBLE! In Palestinian schoolbooks, there is no trace of the Green Line! They do not recognize the existence of Israel even in the 1967 borders! They say that the 'Zionist gangs' stole the country from the Arabs! That's how they poison the minds of their children!

These blood-curdling revelations were published this week in Israel and around the world. The conclusion is self-evident: the Palestinian Authority, which is responsible for the schoolbooks, cannot be a partner in peace negotiations.

What a shock!

Truth is, there is nothing new here. Every few years, when all the other arguments for refusing to speak with the Palestinian leadership wear thin, the ultimate argument pops up again: Palestinian schoolbooks call for the destruction of Israel!

The ammunition is always provided by one of the 'professional' institutions that deal with this matter. These are foundations of the far-right, disguised as 'scientific' bodies, which are lavishly funded by Jewish-American multi-millionaires. Teams of salaried employees apply a fine-tooth comb to every word of the Arab media and schoolbooks, with a pre-ordained objective: to prove that they are anti-Semitic, preach hatred of Israel and call for the killing of Jews. In the sea of words, it is not too difficult to find suitable quotes, while ignoring everything else......

WELL, WHAT about our side? What do our schoolbooks look like?

Does the Green Line appear in them? Do they recognize the right of the Palestinians to establish a state on the other side of our 1967 borders? Do they teach love for the Palestinian people (or even the existence of the Palestinian people), or respect for the Arabs in general, or a knowledge of Islam?

The answer to all these questions: Absolutely not!

Recently, Minister of Education Yuli Tamir came out with a bombastic announcement saying that she intends to mark the Green Line in the schoolbooks, from which it was removed almost 40 years ago. The Right reacted angrily, and nothing more was heard about it.

From kindergarten to the last day of high school, the Israeli pupil does not learn that the Arabs have any right at all to any of this land. On the contrary, it is clear that the land belongs to us alone, that God has personally given it to us, that we were indeed driven out by the Romans after the destruction of our Temple in the year 70 (a myth) but that we returned at the beginning of the Zionist movement. Since then, the Arabs have tried again and again to annihilate us, as the Goyim have done in every generation. In 1936, the 'gangs' (the official Israeli term for the fighters of the Arab Revolt) attacked and murdered us. And so on, up to this very day.

When he comes out of the pedagogic mill, the Jewish-Israeli pupil 'knows' that the Arabs are a primitive people with a murderous religion and a miserable culture. He brings this view with him when he (or she) joins the army a few weeks later. There, it is reinforced almost automatically. The daily humiliation of old people and women - not to mention everybody else - at the checkpoints would not be possible otherwise......

I repeat what I said then: the aim must be that the child in Ramallah sees before his eyes, on the wall of his classroom, a map on which the State of Israel is marked. And that the child in Rishon-le-Zion sees before his eyes, on the wall of his classroom, a map on which the State of Palestine is marked. Not by compulsion, but by agreement.

That is, of course, impossible as long as Israel has no borders. How can one mark on the map a state which, from its first day, has refused, consciously and adamantly, to define its borders? Can we really demand that the Palestinian ministry of education publish a map on which all the territory of Palestine lies inside Israel?

And on the other hand, how can one mark on the map the name 'Palestine', when there is no Palestinian state? After all, even most of those Israeli politicians who profess - at least pro forma - to support the two-state solution will go to great lengths to avoid saying where the border between the two states should run. Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, is totally opposed to the announced intention of her colleague, Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, to mark the Green Line, lest it be seen as a border.

Peace means a border. A border fixed by agreement. Without a border, there can be no peace. And without peace, it is the height of chutzpa to demand something from the other side that we totally refuse to do ourselves. "

Another Red Carpet.....Another Visitor to the Reservation....Another Photo Op.....
Another Plot of Palestinian Land Confiscated by Israel....Another Housing Unit Added to the West Bank Colonies.....
Keep the "Peace Process" Opium Flowing.....