Palestinian Pundit

Ahh...American "Democracy" Has Arrived in Somalia

Occupation did not defeat Mansour -cancer will not

"Occupation did not defeat Mansour - neither will cancer

My friend Mansour Thabet, Abu Ghassan, is a political prisoner. He spent 19 years in Israeli jails. His big "error" was to say "no" to the Israeli occupation, just like all the Palestinian people who have always said "no" to the occupation, each in his or her own way.

Now he is out of prison, but suffering from colon cancer and its aftermath. His right leg was amputated due to a rare complication of chemotherapy, deep venous thrombosis. Mansour was its victim.

But in Gaza there is always more to the story.

In Gaza hospitals lack proper and adequate chemotherapy, because of the embargo and sanctions and closure of border crossings. Mansour was denied a permit to enter Israel for treatment because of his jail record. Leaving Gaza via the Palestinian Egyptian border is a big ordeal and an uncertain route, but he might succeed in taking this option for further treatment abroad.

Mansour is a father, with one son and 5 daughters.

I visited him in the hospital. He was frail but smiling, and I was inspired by his full determination and strong will. He was very enthusiastic in pursuing his very successful important project (new horizons for the children) in the Nusseirat refugee camp. There you can meet dozens of young smiling Palestinian kids dancing, singing, painting, reading and dreaming of a better future. They can tell you their great grandparents' stories of their villages and life in Palestine before 1948,
when Palestinians were forced out by a big Zionist colonial plan to compel indigenous people to leave their homes.

In less than 3 weeks Israel will celebrate its independence day. Palestinians will commorate what happened in 1948, they will tell their children again and again about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Is it just that Palestinian patients have had to suffer twice, from their own illness and then from the Occupation whose rules and regulations deprive people of their humanity and dignity?"

Jordan confiscates video of interview with Prince Hassan

AP

"Jordanian authorities on Saturday confiscated the videotape of an interview with the country's former crown prince by Al-Jazeera Television, the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster and a Jordanian official said.

The tape was confiscated as an Al-Jazeera reporter was about to leave the Hashemite kingdom. No further details about the circumstances of the seizure were immediately known.

Nasser Judeh, the chief Jordanian government spokesman, confirmed the videotape's confiscation but said it had nothing to do with the content of the interview with Prince Hassan, the uncle to Jordan's King Abdullah II and one time heir to the Jordanian throne.

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera aired a statement by Ghassan Ben Jeddou, the network's bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon, who had interviewed Prince Hassan in Amman and who said the tape contained remarks by the Jordanian royal claiming that a national security adviser in Saudi Arabia was financing Sunni militants to fight the Iran-backed Hezbollah group. The network identified the Saudi official as Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington.

In the interview, Prince Hassan also sharply criticized United States policies in the region as destructive, Ben Jeddou said.

Ben Jeddou said that the Jordanian authorities informed the channel's office in Amman that the seizure was an official measure by Jordanian authorities and that they have no problem with al-Jazeera.

Ben Jeddou said the confiscation was a mistake by the Jordanians. The reporter also cited the Jordanians as telling him that there were higher interests for the country than dealing with what you reporters call freedom of journalism.

Hassan was the brother of King Hussein but was dismissed as crown prince in a 1999 royal shake-up by Hussein shortly before his death that year. He is a moderate who does not hold any official role in Jordanian politics but is has considerable influence among decision makers.

A spokesman for Prince Hassan declined to comment the incident."

***

A Comment:

Good for Al-Jazeera; just about the only free and courageous voice in the entire Arab world. The fossilized Arab dictators still want to suppress the truth in this day of information! Unbelievable! Have they heard of the internet and satellite T.V.? No wonder the Arab world still lives in the middle Ages.

What Prince Hassan is saying is the truth and has been reported by highly reputable reporters such as Seymour Hersh. Hersh reported a couple of months ago about the Saudi plan implemented in partnership with the U.S. and Israel to finance and arm some Al-Qa'ida affiliated groups in Lebanon to fight Hizbullah. The key Saudi figure is Prince Bandar (Bush). Some of the billions of dollars stolen from Iraq by the U.S. are being laundered by the Saudis and channeled to the "Sunni" groups in Lebanon as well as to some militias which are supervised and trained by the Siniora government.

Here is the link to Hersh's article, titled "The redirection" published by the New Yorker magazine on March 5; it is a must read if you have not read it. It describes in some detail the emerging U.S.-Israel-"moderate" Arabs alliance against Iran and Hizbullah.

So, little boy king, "there were higher interests for the country than dealing with what you reporters call freedom of journalism." Pray tell like what? Like not exposing the rotten Saudi monarchy and the sinister U.S. plans for perpetual war and fragmentation of the Arab world in the service of Greater Israel? You are indeed a dependable puppet in the service of Usrael.

Why is Anti-Muslim Bigotry Tolerated?

By REMI KANAZI
CounterPunch

"......Unsurprisingly, one important question has not been asked since Imus' downward spiral: what if those "nappy headed hos" were Arab or Muslim? Regrettably, we have a plethora of examples to point to post-911, but we don't need to rehash all of it, one can just watch a nightly episode of Fox News's Bill O'Reilly or CNN's Glenn Beck. Yet, my bone to pick is not with the establishment neocons, Fox News, or Ms. Malnourished herself, Ann Coulter, but rather those "peaceful" and "all-accepting liberals" who complain so frequently about Imus and those like him.

To see how anti-Arab/anti-Muslim bigotry is accepted and applauded in America, one has to look no further than HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, hosted by "left-wing" comedian and political commentator Bill Maher. "Liberal" pundits like Maher pass off their anti-Arab/anti-Muslim rhetoric as an innocent invocation of Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations." Yet, Maher's vitriolic diatribes are no different than one saying, "black people are ruthless, welfare grubbing criminals." Nonetheless, to a "liberal," the previous comment is racist and wrong, because black people, unlike the days of slavery, are now "like us," meaning white Anglo-American society, whereas Arabs and Muslims (as if they are a unitary, monolithic people), can still be labeled wholly as "backwards, ruthless, Jew-hating animals."

In Maher's program, he regularly brings on guests that espouse anti-Arab/anti-Muslim views, some of them being supposed "self-critical" Muslims. These guests, however, principally serve to support Maher's own bias against Muslims and Arabs, bolstering his pro-Israel feelings. These guests include conservative Israeli politician, and former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Lebanese-born neocon and political hack Fouad Ajami, putative introspective Muslim moderate Irshad Manji, and former Muslim, now professed atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, among many others.

Showcasing the "tolerance of liberalism," Maher brought on his claimed "hero," Ayaan Hirsi Ali, of the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, to help him explain to HBO viewers just what was wrong with Islam. Like a fat kid in a candy store, Maher looked to Hirsi Ali on his panel this season and stated, "[I] s Islam a religion of peace? You are one of the brave people who say it's not really a religion of peace." More than happy to respond, Hirsi Ali proclaimed, "It's not a religion of peace. Immediately after 9/11 they should have said, it's not a religion of peace, we're up against Islam." That's right because Pat Robertson speaks for all Christians and the list of disgruntled students that have gunned down their schoolmates since Columbine speak for all people under the age of 25. What if Hirsi Ali said, "Immediately after the black thug robbed the liquor store, they should have said, black people are criminals, we're up against black people." After her enlightening comments, while she went on to trash Saudi Arabia for a moment, Hirsi Ali received a huge applause from the audience. Even Steven Weber, an actor who stars on TVs Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, had to jump in and beg the question of whether it was right to characterize a whole religion and the beliefs of 1.3 billion people this way. Apparently it is because Maher, educating the naive Weber (who was talking of moderate Islam), asserted that "no, [religions are] not all alikeno [Islam] was extremist to begin with. Mohammed was a warrior." Maher's lesson on the malady of Islam followed up on his earlier comments in which he said that the West is not only better, but "superior" to the rest of world. Huh, I wonder why they don't like us.

Bias against Arabs and Islam-and bashing them as a monolithic entity-is accepted across the news media, whether it is in reporting or punditry. This makes it even more important, especially in this "gloves off" age of comedy, to make a clear distinction between comedy and news. It is equally, if not more important, to condemn bigotry that is masked as humor......"

Ulterior Motives of a Potential Iran War Profiteer—and Its Risks

by Ali Fathollah-Nejad

Global Research, April 21, 2007

"......But is that ‘talk of war’ made in the noble intention to prevent our world from a terrible, almost unique, disaster—or are their tangible interests behind that?......

While Moscow was the only major global power condemning the kidnapping of Iranian diplomats early this year in Northern Iraq, it sharpened the tone as it considered Iran’s seizure of British spies and its subsequent pursuit of its nuclear research activities despite the latest Security Council resolution a ‘provocation.’ A major commentator from Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti, even concluded that it is Iran that is ‘provoking’ a war......

Russia’s Secret Desires

A lot of evidence points to the fact that in the case of an Iran War, Russia is most probably the only strategic beneficiary of such a scenario. Of course, the United States’ decisive hold on the world’s fossil energy center is destined to provide it with the most powerful strategic leverage enabling Washington to prolong its global supremacy. But assuming the continuity of the neoconservatives’ false—if not amateurish—calculations of the outcomes of their foreign policy initiatives and the evanescent probability of the U.S. remaining the master of an unpredictable situation of a Middle East going up in flames, the profiteer of such a bloody quagmire can be sought elsewhere.

The world’s great powers—i.e. the European Union, India, China, and Japan—have nothing to gain, but much to loose from a war on Iran, as all-time record oil prices will blatantly undermine their highly oil-dependent economies. But Russia, an important oil-producing nation itself, would not be disinclined when such a case turns real.Being a major energy supplier for China and Europe, Moscow disposes one-fourth of the world’s proved reserves of natural gas (before Iran and Qatar) and six percent of petroleum. Therefore Russia’s role as an indispensable energy supplier will be strengthened as a result of war, moreover benefitting from increased world market prices for both petroleum and gas.....

Risky Roulette

But all this does not mean that Russia will be able to occupy a calm seat while making major economic and strategic gains from such a grueling fight. As an all-out war is highly probable, Russia could hardly remain for a long time a mere observer of a theater of war erupting at its Southern flank. As Caspian Sea abutters (above all, Azerbaijan and Georgia) might be roped in a war as they harbor U.S. military bases from where strikes could be carried out, amalgamation with other regional security issues in that geostrategically indispensable part of the world involving Russia cannot be ruled out. In this light, Russia’s interests in Transcaucasia and Central Asia can be jeopardized by U.S. military actions emanating from there. There are signs that American allies will get the green light to go for their interests in the region, which are predominantly in contrast to Russian ones......."

"أبدت حركة المقاومة الإسلامية (حماس) استياءها واستغرابها من تصريحات نسبت لملك الأردن عبد الله الثاني والتي دعا فيها إلى التفكير بدفع تعويضات للاجئين الفلسطينيين بدلا من الحديث عن إعادتهم لوطنهم الأصلي.

وأكد المتحدث باسم حماس بغزة سامي أبو زهري أن الشعب الفلسطيني لم يخول أي نظام عربي للتفاوض بشأن حق العودة أو التنازل عنه.

وشدد أبو زهري في اتصال هاتفي مع الجزيرة نت على تمسك حماس -التي تقود الحكومة الفلسطينية بعد فوزها بثقة الفلسطينيين بالانتخابات التشريعية- بثوابت ومبادئ الشعب الفلسطيني وعلى رأسها حق العودة.

كما استهجن ما نسب لملك الأردن خلال لقائه بأعضاء من الكنيست الإسرائيلي من أقوال جاء فيها "نحن معكم في مركب واحد، نواجه نفس الأعداء".

ووصف المتحدث باسم حماس هذه التصريحات بالمفاجئة للفلسطينيين ولأبناء الأمتين العربية والإسلامية الذين يعتبرون الإسرائيليين المغتصبين للأراضي الفلسطينية أعداء.

ودعا أبو زهري لإعادة النظر في هذه التصريحات التي قال إنها "تمثل قمة التطبيع مع العدو الإسرائيلي في اللحظة التي يواصل فيها قتل أهلنا بالأراضي الفلسطينية"، مشيرا إلى إمكانية استغلال إسرائيل مثل هذه التصريحات لصالحها ضد الحق الفلسطيني.

......."

Hamas: RoR not for sale

"Hamas Movement affirmed on Saturday that the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees (RoR) is a sacred Palestinian constant that no party can compromise or abandon.

Fawzi Barhoum, the Movement’s spokesman in Gaza Strip, affirmed that Hamas had made up its mind and decided long time ago that the RoR is a Palestinian national constant that none has the right to forgo.

“The RoR isn’t for sale”, Barhoum emphasized.

Barhoum was apparently reacting to statements uttered by Jordanian monarch Abdullah II suggesting that the RoR could be “financially compensated”.

“We have defended the refugees’ issue with blood and soul over the past decades, and therefore, those precious sacrifices must be crowned with the return of those refugees and not by financially compensating or naturalizing them somewhere else”, asserted Barhoum.

Commenting on the monarch’s statement that Israel and Arab countries are facing “common enemies” in allusion to Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran; Barhoum underlined that Hamas Movement isn’t in enmity with any state, and that its only enemy is the “Zionist entity”.

He also underlined that Israel is the enemy of the Arab people as it killed many Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian nationals in addition to tens of thousands of the Palestinian people.

“We are not here to react to statements here and there as we know where our direction is, and we have a clear national project, and thus, Israel is our only enemy and we fight it for occupying our lands and killing our people”, the Hamas spokesman further underlined.

Moreover, Barhoum called on Arab rulers and governments to carry out their religious and national duties in defense of the sacred Muslim shrines in Palestine and to enhance the steadfastness of the Palestinian people to enable them retrieve their usurped rights.

In a meeting with Israeli Knesset (parliament) speaker Dalia Itzik, Abdullah proposed paying the Palestinian refugees money sums in return for forgoing the RoR, and described Hamas, Iran, and Hizbullah as “common enemies” for Arabs and Israel.

The monarch is scheduled to visit Tel Aviv within a couple of weeks and is expected to deliver a speech in the Knesset during the visit."

***

A Comment:

This is really pathetic, if this is the best rebuttal Hamas could come up with. Besides repeating worn-out slogans, the statement is inconsistent and makes little sense.

Barhoum said, "Hamas Movement isn’t in enmity with any state," after the puppet king clearly said what most of the Arab puppet rulers would not say publicly. The recent Arab summit, which Habila and Abbas enthusiastically participated in, was primarily to form and solidify the axis of "moderates" to confront what they consider the real enemies (Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas if it does not join the "moderates"). So, it is nonsensical for Hamas to pretend that the reality is different.

After all the betrayal, the participation in the siege of the Palestinians and the eagerness of the Arab regimes to sell the Palestinians out and normalize with Israel, to concentrate on the real enemy (Iran), how can Barhoum make a stupid statement such as calling for "Arab rulers and governments to carry out their religious and national duties in defense of the sacred Muslim shrines in Palestine and to enhance the steadfastness of the Palestinian people to enable them retrieve their usurped rights?" What kind of political witchcraft is this?

The average Palestinian knows that most of the Arab regimes are the enemy, so why does Hamas pretend otherwise? Giving political cover to all of these puppets who will betray the Palestinians is an act of betrayal on the part of Hamas itself.

Any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent

By Robert Fisk

"Could it possibly be that the security men who guard the frontiers of North America are supporting Holocaust denial? Alas, it's true. Here's the story.

Taner Akcam is the distinguished Turkish scholar at the University of Minnesota who, with immense courage, proved the facts of the Armenian genocide - the deliberate mass murder of up to a million and a half Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities in 1915 - from Turkish documents and archives. His book A Shameful Act was published to great critical acclaim in Britain and the United States......

But Taner Akcam's experience is potentially far more serious for all of us. As he wrote in a letter to me this month, "Additional to the criminal investigation (law 301) in Turkey, there is a hate campaign going on here in the USA, as a result of which I cannot travel internationally any more... My recent detention at the Montreal airport - apparently on the basis of anonymous insertions in my Wikipedia biography - signals a disturbing new phase in a Turkish campaign of intimidation that has intensified since the November 2006 publication of my book."......

"I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The photo was a still from a 2005 documentary on the Armenian genocide... The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can modify at any time. For the last year ... my Wikipedia biography has been persistently vandalised by anonymous 'contributors' intent on labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as 'customer reviews' of my books at Amazon.".....

So let's get this clear. US and Canadian officials now appear to be detaining the innocent on the grounds of hate postings on the internet. And it is the innocent - guilty until proved otherwise, I suppose - who must now pay lawyers to protect them from Homeland Security and the internet. But as Akcam says, there is nothing he can do......."

Both Iraq's car bombers and the White House see the Shia resurgence and Iran as the main enemies

Mike Davis
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian

"Last Wednesday, following the car bomb massacre of nearly 200 people in Baghdad, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, paid a visit to the lunatic asylum known as the White House to inform its chief inmate that "the war is lost". He referred to the "extreme violence" in Baghdad as proof that US military strategy was now bankrupt.

Reid's declaration is unprecedented in modern US politics, but the senator is no gloating peacenik. Indeed, he angered fellow Democrats last year with his endorsement of the administration's plan for a troop "surge" in Baghdad. If he now risks predictable Cheney-Rove accusations of counselling "surrender", it is because he carries moral power of attorney from influential Republicans as well as Democrats. Just as the Democratic party was splintered in 1968 by the war in Indochina, the Republicans are beginning to split over the madness of the continuing occupation of Iraq......."

Arab Puppets' Idea of "Normalization"
By Hamed Najeeb

Bush's "Security" Plan For Iraq

Haneyya: Security plan to protect resistance

"Ismail Haneyya, the PA premier, on Friday announced that the security plan endorsed by his cabinet almost a week ago would protect the Palestinian resistance.

Haneyya, addressing the Friday congregation in Omari mosque in Jabalia to the north of the Gaza Strip, said that the security plan would not harm resistance.

"The plan is not like past ones, rather it will end (security) chaos" while preserving resistance, the premier asserted.

He explained that the plan was designed to end the security mess and to check the unruly families and gangs in addition to thwarting attacks on citizens' property......"

***
A Comment:

What is he talking about? He must think that we are all stupid and uninformed, like him. The reality is that the "security forces" are under the Usraeli stooge Abbas. These forces are being expanded, trained and armed with direct aid from the U.S., Jordan and Egypt, among others, with Israeli support. We also know that "security coordination" meetings are taking place regularly between Abbas' people, the Israelis, the Egyptians and the chief coordinator and the man who is the real boss of the Palestinian "forces" and that is the American Keith Dayton. The purpose of the "security" plan, as announced by Abbas, is to deploy forces along the Gaza borders to prevent "arms smuggling" from Egypt and to prevent the Palestinian resistance from carrying out any attacks. After the expansion of these forces, the Usraeli plan, to which Abbas is committed, is to disarm the resistance by force.

These are the facts, which we are well aware of. So why does Habila continue to deceive and lie about the "security" plan protecting the resistance? The fact is that this plan is to end the resistance. This Orwellian upside down world of Habila is a direct result of the major contradictions of Hamas (which is supposed to be a resistance movement) forming a partnership with an Usraeli agent such as Abbas, who makes no secret of his plans to end the resistance and to keep his role as Usrael's chief hire-a-cop.

This Habila belongs in a mental institution and not in "government." If Hamas decides to become a resistance movement again (which I doubt), the first act to restore some of its lost credibility is to pull out of this sham "government" and to insist on dissolving the PA, otherwise it should be considered as an extension of the occupation and dealt with accordingly.

Musharraf: Willing to visit Israel to promote peace

"Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a surprise offer Friday to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an interview with the pan-Arab satellite Television Al-Arabiya.

Musharraf told the Dubai-based television that he would be willing to visit Israel in order to help bring peace to the troubled Middle East.

Pakistan - a key ally in the U.S.-led war against terrorism - has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel and supports a separate state for Palestinians with Jerusalem as its capital.

In the interview aired late Friday, Musharraf said he was enthusiastic to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and would go to Israel if his offer to be involved in a mediation process was accepted.

Musharraf said he could also start his talks first with the Palestinians, "or maybe in some third country ... going to Israel is also a possibility."

"It will be an honor, if I can contribute in any way," said Musharraf, although he has so far not been asked to mediate. "If there was a role that I can play, and both sides accept that role, yes, indeed, I would like to play that role."......

Pakistan has not been yet involved in any negotiations concerning the Arab region, but hosted talks in late February in Islamabad, attended by Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, on issues ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the war in Iraq and the standoff with Iran......

Musharraf had defended his government's talks with Israel, saying contact between the two countries is in accordance with the tenets of Islam. Musharraf said Islam allowed its followers to engage with people of other faiths.....

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who was also present in the meeting, said Pakistan would decide about the recognition of Israel "in the supreme national interest after due consultations."

Pakistan had made the decision to hold talks with Israel after the implementation of the 2005 disengagement plan."

A Repost of a Great Article
By Pepe Escobar

""DAMASCUS - There are three overlapping wars in Iraq: the Sunni Arab guerrilla struggle against the US; strands of Sunni Arab guerrillas against assorted Shi'ite militias/death squads; and al-Qaeda in Iraq against the puppet, US-backed Iraqi government in the Green Zone. Make it four wars: the Sunni Arab guerrilla war against the government inside the Green Zone. Better yet, make it five wars: the Sadrists, from Sadr City to Kufa and Najaf, against the Americans.

All strands of these five overlapping wars will never allow the United States - or Anglo-American Big Oil - to control Iraq's oil wealth. Even if the new oil law is ratified by Parliament before June, implementation will be a certified nightmare, and security for billions of dollars of necessary investment non-existent......

In the last chapter of my book Globalistan - titled "Condofornia vs Slumistan" - I argue that the future now revolves around the tension between gated communities and unruly slums, "secure environments" and black waves of anger. Wherever both meet - from Baghdad to Sao Paulo - we may see endless replays of Black Hawk Down.

The Baghdad gulag is a Pentagon-enforced Condofornia imposed over an Arab Slumistan. Let no one be fooled: it's being conducted as a technical experiment, with live Iraqis as guinea pigs, and is bound to be replicated in other areas of the Pentagon-created "arc of instability" from the Andes to the Horn of Africa to Arabia to Central Asia........

The Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) has already celebrated the arrival of the Baghdad gulag - by attacking the heart of the system itself, the Green Zone. The bomb that exploded on Thursday in the cafeteria of the Baghdad Convention Center - which houses the Iraqi Parliament, inside the Green Zone - was yet another crystal-clear message: we can strike you as we please, and where we please......

Crucially, this would mean no passing of the Holy of Holies, the new Iraqi oil law. It's also an open secret in Baghdad - as well as among Iraqi refugees in Damascus - that the Bush administration's now famous "June deadline" to the Maliki government is only about oil. If the oil law is not approved by then, "all options are on the table", and that means a white coup with the reinstallation of former Central Intelligence Agency asset, former interim prime minister, former "butcher of Fallujah" Iyad Allawi, whose main task would be ... to get the oil law approved......"

Trying to get into the centre of Baghdad earlier this week offered one view of how far away the Americans and Iraqi authorities are from gaining control here.

By Andrew North
BBC News, Baghdad

"We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb.

US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out.

While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.

You won't have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.....

The Sunni extremists held to be responsible for these attacks seem to be making a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan, which is now into its third month.

So far, their surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.

Last month alone there were more than 100 car bombings, and the number of attacks has continued at a similar rate so far this month. This indicates a high level of organisation....."

By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers

"WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq....."

Abbas and Olmert meet again but it appears they have discussed nothing of substance

By Khaled Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

".....Two days prior to the meeting, Olmert was quoted as saying that he wouldn't agree to discuss the main cardinal issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, namely the right of return, ending the military occupation and colonisation of the occupied territories, including Arab-East Jerusalem, and the borders of a prospective Palestinian state.

One Palestinian commentator scoffed at this "game of make believe", wondering if Abbas and Olmert were going to discuss the unseasonably cold weather in Palestine or perhaps the nutritional value of falafel and houmous......

The utter futility of the Abbas-Olmert meetings draws a combination of indifference and anger from the Palestinian public. Palestinian commentators and public opinion leaders have come to the conclusion that by agreeing to take part in such encounters, the Palestinian leadership, particularly Abbas, is indulging either in self- deception or naïveté.

Hani El-Masry, a well-known columnist and political commentator criticised the PA leader for appearing in frequent and "fruitless" high-profile meetings with the Israeli premier.

"Such meetings should not take place unless there are tangible results, otherwise a false impression of normalcy between Israel and ourselves will be created as a result of such meetings," he said.

In fact, most Palestinian pundits here are convinced that the monthly or bi-monthly meetings between Olmert and Abbas are meant to blur the failure of the Bush administration to get Israel to agree to end its occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories and thereby realise the possibility of peace.

If so, these pundits would argue, why should the Palestinian leadership continue to play this game of make believe when all indications show that there will be no serious efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East under the current Bush administration?......"

Arab-Palestinian Knesset member Azmi Bishara explains to Amira Howeidy the motives behind the Israeli media's campaign against him and how it affects the Arab community

Al-Ahram Weekly

"Israel, it seems, is at war with one man. The Israeli media and politicians from across the political spectrum are up in arms against him, the Shabak (intelligence) is said to be preparing a file on him and his fate could have an impact on 1.3 million Arabs living in Israel.

This might be the kind of attention someone as high-profile as Azmi Bishara expects when faced with accusations of treason. Then again, it might not. Bishara is, after all, not just an outspoken Arab-Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament the Knesset but an embodiment of Israel's paradoxes and its complex relationship with itself and its Arab-Palestinian community......

Their vision, which has gained momentum within the Arab community (known as the 1948 Arabs) insists that Israel should be a state for all its citizens and not -- as it now perceives itself -- a Jewish state. A Jewish state, they argue, defies the logics of democracy because it does not equate between its Jewish and non-Jewish populations. Even more alarming for Israeli nationalists is the fact that such a position could represent the nucleus of a bi-national secular state......

Although Bishara is no stranger to prosecution based on similar allegations -- in the past he has always been found innocent - he now believes that "the rules of the game have changed" and that the target is not just him but the entire Palestinian-Arab community living in Israel.

"There is a decision to end our political stream and the unprecedented challenge it represents for them," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview from Doha. "The message is: Palestinian-Arabs who support us will be regarded as people working against Israel. And to do that they are targeting the head of the movement. They cannot tolerate an Arab Knesset member who refutes their claims of democratic practice and argues that Zionism defeats the notion of democracy.".....

The active involvement of the Israeli left alongside the extreme right in teaming up against Bishara in the current media campaign against him comes as no surprise. "The Israeli left and right stood together during the first weeks of the war on Lebanon last summer and the same scenario is repeating itself with me. They're all united against the path that we chose which rejects Zionism and the Zionist nature [of Israel],.....

Israel, says Bishara, perceives its Arabs as a minority who immigrated to Israel, requested an Israeli card and became Israelis. "And therefore when we communicate with other Arabs we are in contact with the enemy. We have a different perception. We are Arabs and our brothers and sisters in the Arab world are Arab, and we were Arab long before Israel was created [in 1948] and imposed its identity on us. Now it wants to impose its enemies as our enemies. They're not."....."

If the fall of Baghdad exposed the dangers of identifying the state solely in its leader, Iraq's past four years show the folly of those -- especially Arabs -- who thought democracy could be imposed by foreign force.

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

".....The importance of studying the fall of Baghdad resides in the insight it gives into how a regime that rested on a personality cult grew hollow. It sheds light on a type of regime that disengaged itself from the concerns, rights and interests of the people, that lumped its citizens into an amorphous body called "the masses", and that believed that slogans were enough to make this body move, as though it had a single head to process the information it was fed......

In like manner, today's sectarian conflict in Iraq has assumed the guise of a conflict between those with and those opposed to the occupation. Tomorrow, it may assume the shape of a race to oust the occupation and claim the laurels for liberating Iraq -- or for achieving the partition of Iraq, which appears to be the way the current dynamics are heading.....

Democracy is not borne from chaos or from the destruction of a nation, that's for sure. Democracy in Germany and Japan did not emerge from the destruction of those countries, contrary to the ridiculous myth. Democracy is an expression of the sovereignty of a nation and a form of exercising this sovereignty -- the most ideal form of exercising sovereignty, according to advocates of democracy, because it reflects the will of the people. Democracy cannot come into effect by manacling the sovereignty of a nation and dismantling a country as is currently taking place in Iraq and as some mad theorists had envisioned......

The current situation in Iraq marks a historic juncture in the Arab world; a juncture that raises a big question mark over the future of the Arab nation state as it currently stands. Iraq has driven home as never before that if this collection of nation states does not develop a higher level of cooperation on the basis of their common Arab identity it will disintegrate into a morass of warring sectarian and tribal groupings and revert to the pre-state era. Globalisation, as opposed to Americanisation and marginalisation, is a process that the Arabs must not allow themselves or their common identity to abandon in its wake. The Arabic language and culture are inherent media of communication and Arab satellite networks, television stations, newspapers, books, coffeehouses and all other public venues offer easily accessible channels for drawing the Arabs together and unifying their agendas. Unless they take advantage of these instruments to develop closer political, economic, social and supranational bonds, globalisation will bring nothing but the fragmentation of each nation state into sectarian and tribal pawns in the political and economic agendas of others......

Baghdad has fallen, but so to have all the illusions that had been pinned upon its fall. Here precisely is where an intensive reassessment must begin."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

The War Party targets the Kremlin

by Justin Raimondo

Global Research, April 19, 2007
Antiwar.com - 2007-04-18

"......The campaign to demonize Russia, and target Putin in particular, is motivated by the Russian president's angular stance against American hegemony, expressed forcefully in a speech to the Munich conference of European nations in February. Russia has opposed U.S. attempts to further destabilize the Middle East, selling defensive weapons to Syria and trying to mediate between the Iranians and the UN Security Council over the nuclear issue. Putin, in short, has failed to know – or keep – his place: this alone puts him in the cross hair of the War Party.

As the U.S. seeks to encircle Russia with a string of "color revolutions" from Ukraine to Georgia to the wilds of Central Asia, a geopolitical game is being played out, one that involves an increasing risk of violent conflict. The volatile mix of ethnic, religious, and political feuds that make life dangerous in the former Soviet republics is a veritable sandbox for the American regime-changers to play in, and the amount of trouble they can cause is considerable. The War Party's relentless campaign to further humiliate an empire already humbled and shattered is playing with fire – nuclear fire, to be exact. The Cold War was a bad idea to begin with; its revival is an even worse one. "

By Steve Bell, The Guardian

"US soldiers are building a three-mile wall to separate one of Baghdad's Sunni enclaves from surrounding Shia neighbourhoods, it emerged today.
The move is part of a contentious security plan that has fuelled fears of the Iraqi capital's Balkanisation.

When the barrier is finished, the minority Sunni community of Adamiya, on the eastern side of the River Tigris, will be completely gated. Traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will provide the only access, the US military said......

Although Baghdad is rife with barriers around marketplaces and areas such as the heavily fortified Green Zone, this is the first in the city to be set up on sectarian lines.

The concrete wall, which will be up to 12ft high, "is one of the centrepieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence," US officials said.

The officials said the barrier would allow authorities to screen people entering and leaving Adamiya "while keeping death squads and militia groups out".

The construction - which has been nicknamed the "great wall of Adamiya" - is not the first time US military planners have attempted to isolate hostile regions.

In 2005, attempts were made to surround the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra with raised earth barriers to prevent insurgents from entering and leaving. A similar strategy was also deployed in both Tal Afar and Falluja.

General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Iraq, said he believed the tactics in Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, were successful - but the area has since fallen back under insurgent control.

Critics of the scheme said it had been tried in past counter-insurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Algeria, but found wanting......"

***

Who said there is no "reconstruction" in Iraq? The Israeli solution to every problem: put Arabs in ghettos.

As Pepe Escobar says (I am paraphrasing), "make no mistake about it, this is an experiment about locking up those who oppose the Empire, and it will be globalized."

An Important Story
The sellout of the Palestinians.

"Jordan's King Abdullah II Thursday told a delegation of Knesset members that "we are in the same boat, we have the same problem. We have the same enemies." The king reiterated the comments a number of times, which those at the meeting said referred to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Abdullah also emphasized that he spoke not only for Jordan but for a group of states in the region. The king asked at one point: "Do you want Iran on the banks of the Jordan?"

Former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said in response: "I have seen Jordanian openness that does not hesitate to scold extremist Muslims." MK Shlomo Breznitz said that the comments raise the first hope that moderates plan to set the tone in the Arab world. "The style and daring are new," he said......

The king responded again and again that everything would be consensual. He claimed the Arab peace plan is not a plan but talking points. After Rivlin said the Arab League secretary commented "Take it or leave it," Abdullah said "Leave him to me." He did say that instead of talking about he right of return, it might be necessary to talk about the right to compensation, and that it was not only an Israeli problem, but also a problem of the wealthy Arab countries......

The Israeli delegation was impressed with Abdullah's frankness but said he demands too high a price."

Would You Buy an Old and Used "Peace Plan" From This Salesman?

"......Speaking at Murrells Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina, McCain was asked when he thought that the US Military might "send an air mail message to Tehran."

"McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song," the Georgetown Times reports.

"'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,' he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann," the paper notes.

McCain then added, "Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel."....."

By Dr. Daud Abduallah
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

".....Silent Exodus

Of all the troubling consequences of the international embargo the most shocking is its contribution to the silent exodus of Palestinians. Israel’s political leadership has no intent of repeating the forced ‘transfer’ (expulsions) of 1948. They are, however, prepared to make life so unbearable for the Palestinians that they would on their own accord resort to ‘voluntary transfer.’ This process has regrettably begun. In 2006, 46,000 Palestinian applications were submitted to foreign consulates in the OT for visas to leave. By keeping the sanctions in place the international community has in effect become complicit in a process of quiet ethnic cleansing.

Unfortunately, the worse may yet to come if the Palestinians fail to preserve their national unity. Recent American moves to deliver $60 million worth of arms to President Abbas’ security guard seem especially designed to undo the process of national reconciliation started by the Makka agreement. The similar arming and support of one faction at the expense of the other in Iraq did not only plunge that country into the inferno of civil war. It also gave birth to the largest refugee crisis in the region since the Palestinian Nakba of 1948. Since both the US and EU seem incapable of adopting an even-handed policy toward the conflict, Arab and Muslim countries share a joint responsibility to prevent a similar scenario in Palestine. With 50,000 Iraqis spilling out across the region every month the Middle East can ill afford a similar catastrophe from Palestine.

At present Palestinians are in need of assistance not to become a source of irritation to the Israelis but in order to achieve their freedom. ‘Only free men can negotiate’. Confining the discussions to security and humanitarian issues would not deliver freedom or independence. It is in the best interest of all the parties including the US and the EU to begin a new political dialogue; not for the sake of talking but in order to build a better future for the region. As a demonstration of goodwill and positive statement of intent this process must begin with the release of the Palestinian prisoners and lifting of the sanctions."

By Jeff Parker

Arab Initiative Committee calls for direct negotiations between Arab countries and Israel

"Following a meeting between 13 Arab foreign ministers in the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, the Arab Initiative Committee has called for holding an international conference aimed at launching direct negotiations with Israel, across all diplomatic tracks.

The committee revealed their decision to form a taskforce to contact the Israeli government, and to deduce strategies aimed at reviving and promoting the Arab peace initiative, ratified in the 2002 Beirut summit, and reactivated in Riyadh last month.

The committee also decided to hold an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers in the first half of June, to be held in Cairo......"

***

So far the obedient Arab puppets have been executing Condoleezza's orders and script for normalizing relations with Israel. The whole strategy of launching the "peace initiative" is nothing but a cover for all the Arab regimes to start engaging Israel directly in a process of normalization. Olmert and Livni said to the Arabs (by way of Rice) normalize relations with Israel first then Israel might start thinking about some limited withdrawals. Condoleezza laid down the foundation of this evolving process when she met in Jordan with the Security Chiefs of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (so-called Arab quartet) in Jordan over a month ago; that was an extraordinary meeting.

The main objective is to forge a real working alliance between Israel and the surrogate Arab regimes to further Usraeli goals in the region and to try to crush any resistance to these plans. For the Palestinians the stench of a sellout is in the air. The real tragedy is that the supposed representatives of the Palestinians are part and parcel of this sellout.

The next likely step in this Condoleezza-choreographed dance is to have the Arab "working committees" submit the "initiative" to the Security Council to gain "international legitimacy." At that point, the U.S. will see to it that the right of return and the return of East Jerusalem, among other things, are stripped out of it. The Arab quislings will of course go along since this will be the "international mandate" and the will of the "international community." Then the Palestinian "leadership" will have at least three layers of cover to cover this betrayal: the cover of the "unity government," the "Arab consensus" cover and the "international will" cover. They will blame the sellout on everyone else, but themselves. Already Habila says that, "freeing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is an Arab and Muslim collective responsibility."

Along the way, relations between most of the Arab regimes and Israel, at many levels will be established.

So, let us celebrate the emerging Axis of Israel-Egypt-Jordan-Saudi Arabia-UAE (and the rest of the kennel), all in preparation to confront the "real enemy," which is Iran and Hizbullah, of course.

Tony Sayegh

"Ramallah - Ma'an - The popular committee to support Palestinian products has stressed the importance of obtaining the support of all sections of Palestinian society in order to end the Palestinians' dependency on the Israeli economy.

In a statement, the committee secretary Salih Hammad said that it is important to create new peaceful methods of struggle against the Israeli economic occupation. This can be achieved through creating a culture that encourages Palestinians to buy and use Palestinian products, the statement said.

In his statement, Hammad added that it is important to make the consumer trust the product and that can be achieved by advising the producers to improve their products. He also suggested that Palestinian traders be encouraged to refrain from importing products which the Palestinian producers produce themselves. He also said Palestinian capitalists should be encouraged to invest their money inside Palestine and not outside.

He also stressed the importance of the role of the decision-makers in the government and in the private sector. The statement stressed that the media can also play an important role in this regard through publishing the goals of such a culture. "

Please Sign Petition Below and Circulate

"Every now and then we are reminded by the state of Israel and its institutions, that the Arab Palestinians constitute a strategic threat to Israel. Such a tendency has been always voiced in different degrees of frenzyness and nakedness, yet its current pitch is unprecedented. At this point, the Palestinian Arabs face a trying phase in their relation with the State of Israel as a result of their legitimate and just demand that the state of Israel should be a ‘state of all its citizens.’ The fact that Israel continues to define itself as a ‘Jewish Democratice State,’ trying the impossible mission to be aknolwedged as a model of a modern democracy, yet to the preserve the ‘Jewishness’ of its identity, is no doubt the root-cause of all forms of oppression and discrimination against the native Palestinians. The Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel have continuously and restlessly tried to put an end to the deformed relationship with the State and to right the wrongs by venturing the moral and democratic alternative of ‘the state of all its citizens.’ However, no results whatsoever were realized towards attaining the collective rights of the native Palestinians, nor lifting the barefaced discrimination against them.

The state of Israel has been systematically keen in passing legislations that serve the persecution of the Arab political leadership of the Palestinian citizens. Therefore, the state of Israel is to be blamed for the deterioration of the relationship with its Arab citizens who have been always wronged and discriminated against .The renewed persecution of the the intellectual and political nationliast Azmi Bishara and his Party—who has been challenging the ideological and political foundations of the contradictory Israeli democracy—is, indeed a persecution of the very existence of the Palestinian citizens of the State.

Acknowledging the rights of the Palestinians to their land, and other rights based on their aboriginality and citizenship that should never be compromised under any justification—we condemn all forms of oppression, threats, persecution and any restrictions on the freedom of speech.

The campaign waged by state of Israel and led by the head of its Secret Services (the Shabak) constitute a real threat to democracy and the values of freedom and liberty that are supposed to be guarded by the state itself. The appalling and racist locutions such as describing the Arabs in Israel as a “strategic threat,” and stating that “anybody who tries to change the nature of the State, even via democratic means, would be persecuted”—voiced by the head of the Shabak, reflect the dangerous degree of the formal incitement against the Palestinians. It is a moral obligation to resist this campaign promptly and firmly by all individuals, political parties, institutes, that believe in the human right of the Palestinians to live with dignity in their own homeland enjoying freedom and liberty.

We, the signatories of this petition, based on what has been stated above, declare the following:

We strongly condemn the frenzy campaign against the intellectual and nationalist Dr. Azmi Bishara, and call for an immediate cessation of this political persecution.

We appeal to all political parties and the Arab leadership in Israel to face jointly and firmly this campaign which targets the collective Arab presence on their homeland.

We call upon all Palestinians, friends, and supporters allover the world to unite in putting an end to this racist campaign and use it to persecute the proponents of discrimination and ethnic cleansing instead of persecuting the advocates of equality in "a state of all its citizens." "

Click Here to Sign

ليسوا مادة مهرجانية

د. عادل سمارة
رام لله المحتلة


ليست هذه كلمة للمشاركة في "هلمَّة" الأسرى. ليس تقليلاً من تضحياتهم ومعاناتهم وأوجاع نسائ
هم وأمهاتهم وبناتهم وأخواتهم وأبنائهم...الخ، وإنما انتصاراً للأسرى ولهؤلاء.
لم تبق مؤسسة رسمية ولا شعبية ولا مؤسسة أنجزة إلا وأشغلت يوم 17 نيسان وشاغلته "بأنشطتها". تحدث البلغاء، وزغردت النساء وصرح الساسة، ورقص الأطفال يحملون الورود ولا يعرفون حقا لماذا! يحمل ابناء الأسرى الورود ولكن لم يسأل أحد نفسه هل تناول هؤلاء الفطور، وإن حصل ماذا؟ وبالمقابل ماذا في معدة رجال السياسة؟ ذوي البذلات والياقات والوجوه التي تقطر حمرة السمنة؟
ولكن، ما غاب عن كل هذا هم الأسرى أنفسهم، ليس لأنهم في معتقلات الصهيونية الممولة من المركز الرأسمالي الغربي، إنما لأنهم غُيّبوا يوم كان يجب ان يكونوا الحضور ألأساسي بعد حق العودة.
وهذا تحد أوجهه لكل من شارك وبارك ونافق وناور في محادثات مدريد-أوسلو وما تلاها. لماذا وقعتم اتفاقات دون تحرير الأسرى؟ إذا كان هؤلاء، ابناء الفقراء واللاجئين والمعدمين بكل تلك القيمة التي تشهرونها اليوم؟
ما قيمة الإحتجاج فيما بيننا كفلسطينيين؟ ما نحتاجه نحن باستمرار هو تعميق حياة المقاومة وقيمها وثقافتها وجمالياتها. أما الإحتجاج للكيان الصهيوني لأنه يحتجز الأسرى، فلا معنى له. فما معنى وجود احتلال إذا كان لا يقتل ويعتقل؟ كان ولا زال وسيبقى وجوب الإحتجاج ضد أكثرية من يحتفلوا، ضد كل من قبل بمدريد ـ وسلو دون تحرير الأسرى، بل دون تحرير الكثير، ولكننا نذكر الأسرى لأن الأمر في اللحظة مخصص لهم.
من الخطورة بمكان أن يسمح الوعي الجمعي، الذاكرة لمن فرطوا بقضية الأسرى أن يكونوا "رواد" هذه التحركات، فكأننا نوفر لهم الغطاء لما ارتكبوه.
من يريد الاستزادة، فليذهب إلى الجزيرة التي كان يُعتقل فيها منديللا، ليجد أنه أُفرغت من كافة المعتقلين قبل قبول راية الاستسلام من قيادة الأبرثايد الأبيض، ولا أبرثايد إلا ابيضاً.
وليذهب إلى الباسك، ويسمع من هيري بتسونا، التي تضع الأسرى في مقدمة المطالب.
لكننا تعودنا على التزلف لمن هو في السلطة حتى لو كان بلا سلطة.
إذن، ليست السلطة وحدها الغارقة في المفارقات، بل الشارع مفارق ايضاً.
حين تسأل وزيرا (بينك وبينه) لماذا لم تفعل السلطة كذا؟ يجيبك: "يا اخي بيني وبينك هو في سلطة او صلاحيات".
لا شك أن الوزير صادق في ما "يهمس" به. ولكن، إذا كنتم بلا صلاحيات ولا سيادة، فما الذي يربطكم بالسلطة؟ لماذا لا ترموا بها في وجوه من أوقعوكم بهواها؟ ما الذي يدفع إمرءاً للتمسك بأمر لا محتوىً له؟ يبقى الأسرى في المعتقل لأنهم أسرى، فهل أنتم أسرى في مواقعكم؟ والطريف، أن من يحسدون أصحاب مواقع أوسلو يتزايدون!
إنما هناك ما يدفع على الصعيد الشخصي والفئوي والحزبي، هناك السلطة (power) ولو في حدود كونها على الناس المحليين، وترجمة هذه السلطة منافع بتعددها.
ما أتمناه من الأسرى ولهم، أن لا يقبلو بمفارقات الخارج ونفاقه. فالنفاق اقل السلع كلفة، واكثرها أربحية. لا جهد فيها ولا مال، لكنها تعطي أموالاً طائلة، هي صناعة بلا مدخلات مادية لكن لها مخرجات مادية هائلة. ربما تحتاج هذه المعادلة إلى "ألعن" من ماركس كي يحللها.

by Sonja Karkar

"......No one speaks much about the Palestinian prisoners in Israel where they are taken in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting their transfer. Yet, almost every family has experienced the violence of having one of their own taken away. Children are forced to watch their fathers and brothers being herded out of home at gunpoint in the early hours of the morning, blindfolded, handcuffed and secreted away. Pregnant women and mothers have been taken and children as young as 12 are sent to adult prisons. Babies have been born in prison and are then separated from their mothers who sometimes do not see their children again until years later. Sometimes those taken prisoner disappear altogether. The sheer number of Palestinians in prison (currently some 11,000) has made it an unavoidable issue in negotiations and has led to prisoner swaps with Israel. However, nothing much changes because Israel either re-arrests those released or just arrests other Palestinians. This is why the Palestinian National Council decided to declare 17 April as Prisoners’ Day encouraging family and friends to gather throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories and also around the world with photos of their loved ones in the hope of attracting publicity for those in prison and obtaining their release......

There is no excuse for not speaking up, no excuse for accepting Israel’s fantasy of a “beacon unto the nations”. As long as Palestinians are prisoners in the Orwellian world being created around them, as long as their freedom and human rights are denied, as long as their existence is in jeopardy, all the sympathy we murmur to other victims becomes meaningless, just as the noble principles underlying international law and conventions are meaningless. In this dark world of silence, we all become prisoners. "

More than anything else, Bishara constitutes a symbolic threat, since he personifies the recent demand of the Palestinian elite to transform Israel from a Jewish democracy to a democracy for all its citizens.

A Good Piece
By Neve Gordon
(Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University)
PalestineChronicle.com

"......But what, one might ask, are Bishara's new offenses? It is, after all, highly unlikely that he is a spy on the payroll of a foreign entity. And while one may not like his uncompromising opposition to Israeli and American regional policies and his admiration for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's militancy and strategic intelligence, expressing such views does not in and of itself jeopardize Israel's existence. Bishara, it seems, is a threat not because of any particular action or statement but because he has become a symbol of a new kind of opposition within Israel.

During the past few months, political activists and members of the Palestinian intellectual elite within Israel, all of whom are Israeli citizens, have drafted four documents that articulate how they conceive the state's future. The underlying assumption of all of these documents is that as long as Israel is defined as a Jewish state, its laws will always fall short of basic democratic principles and, more particularly, the right of all its citizens to full equality......

Not long after the documents' publication, Israel's second-largest newspaper, Ma'ariv, reported a meeting between the head of the security agency, Yuval Diskin, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. During the meeting Diskin warned Olmert that the radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens constitutes a "strategic threat to the state's existence." Diskin added that "the proliferation of the visionary documents published by the different Arab elites in Israel is particularly worrisome, [since] the documents are united by their conception of Israel as a state for all its citizens and not a Jewish state." The head of the security services concluded that "the separatist and subversive patterns represented by the elites might engender a new direction and mobilize the masses."....."

"Bethlehem - Ma'an - The imprisoned leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa'adat, has urged the captors of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, to stick to their demands to release all long-term Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Sa'adat, who is also a Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member, said,
"The captors of the Israeli soldier should stick to this demand, and call for the release of the Palestinian prisoners from Jerusalem, the Arab prisoners, and the prisoners from the 1948 lands."

On Wednesday, the Israeli military court at Ofer decided to extend Sa'adat's detention until the beginning of May."

Palestinian education minister denies reports that he criticised suicide bombings in interview with US paper

"Jenin - Ma'an exclusive - Palestinian Education Minister Nasser Addin Ash-Sha'er has denied the declarations which the US daily newspaper Washington Post ascribed to him.

In an interview with Washington Post columnist Robert Novak published on Monday, Ash-Sha'er was quoted as saying that bombing attacks by Palestinians on Israeli targets had ruined past peace attempts.

Ash-Sha'er reportedly said that "previous attempts at peace were ruined by suicide bombers. Now, we look forward to a sustained peace."

On Wednesday, in conversation with Ma'an, he depicted the newspaper's allegations as imprecise.

The minister highlighted, "electronic websites took portions of a long interview, and what they took was absolutely out of the real context." It was misinterpreted, he explained......

....he was further quoted as saying. "Without pressure from the president of the United States, nothing is going to happen." "

***

You can read the article by Robert Novak for yourself; just scroll down 13 posts.

This is not surprising. Hamas is now doing exactly what Arafat did before and what Fatah as well as many Arab "leaders" still do. They give totally different messages when they speak in Arabic to their own people and when they give an interview in English to an American reporter. These people underestimate (and insult) our intelligence and our ability to find the truth, which is laughable in this information age. I still remember Arafat talking about the right of return at the very same time when the N.Y. Times published an article bearing his name, in which he openly said that he would not insist on the right of return, since its implementation was "not practical" as he put it.

I have not used the FAMAS label in a while, but I think I should refer to it more often. The differences between the two groups are becoming increasingly blurred.

By Amira Hass

".....Turning the Holocaust into a political asset serves Israel primarily in its fight against the Palestinians. When the Holocaust is on one side of the scale, along with the guilty (and rightly so) conscience of the West, the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland in 1948 is minimized and blurred.

The phrase "security for the Jews" has been consecrated as an exclusive synonym for "the lessons of the Holocaust." It is what allows Israel to systematically discriminate against its Arab citizens. For 40 years, "security" has been justifying control of the West Bank and Gaza and of subjects who have been dispossessed of their rights living alongside Jewish residents, Israeli citizens laden with privileges.

Security serves the creation of a regime of separation and discrimination on an ethnic basis, Israeli style, under the auspices of "peace talks" that go on forever. Turning the Holocaust into an asset allows Israel to present all the methods of the Palestinian struggle (even the unarmed ones) as another link in the anti-Semitic chain whose culmination is Auschwitz. Israel provides itself with the license to come up with more kinds of fences, walls and military guard towers around Palestinian enclaves.

Separating the genocide of the Jewish people from the historical context of Nazism and from its aims of murder and subjugation, and its separation from the series of genocides perpetrated by the white man outside of Europe, has created a hierarchy of victims, at whose head we stand. Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers fumble for words when in Hebron the state carries out ethnic cleansing via its emissaries, the settlers, and ignore the enclaves and regime of separation it is setting up. Whoever criticizes Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is denounced as an anti-Semite, if not a Holocaust denier. Absurdly, the delegitimization of any criticism of Israel only makes it harder to refute the futile equations that are being made between the Nazi murder machine and the Israeli regime of discrimination and occupation.

The institutional abandonment of the survivors is rightly denounced across the board. The transformation of the Holocaust into a political asset for use in the struggle against the Palestinians feed on those same stores of official cynicism, but it is part of the consensus. "

In Iraq, the US pits its Shi'ite collaborators against "other" Shi'ites and assorted Sunnis. In Lebanon, the US places its Sunni clients in opposition to Shi'ites, with help from jihadis linked to al-Qaeda. Hezbollah's challenge is to prevent this from developing into a regional Sunni-Shi'ite war.

A Great Piece
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

".....The game of what many call Hariri Inc was to rebuild the former "Paris of the East" from top - downtown - down during the 1990s, and then the rest of Lebanon would also join the party. It didn't happen. Shi'ites not only didn't profit from it, they were bombed by Israel last summer, after downtown Beirut had become a de facto Saudi playground......

Saudi Arabia's powerful Prince Bandar, former ambassador to Washington, also known as Bandar Bush - who harbors desires of becoming the next Saudi king - is basically pro-US and anti-Syria, thus fiercely anti-Hezbollah. Bandar has been instrumental in convincing other members of the "axis of fear" apart from Saudi Arabia - Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates - that the US must attack Iran sooner rather than later.

It's an open secret in Beirut - and across the Middle East - that the US is financing the Fouad Siniora government with Bandar money, not to mention the almost $9 billion which "mysteriously" disappeared from Iraq. A US-pushed January conference in Paris came up with pledges of no less than $8 billion to Lebanon, including more than $1 billion from the House of Saud. Rafik Hariri himself was always very close to the House of Saud, and Prince Bandar in particular.....

This configures the US, plus the "axis of fear", plus Israel all united to, in White House/Pentagon newspeak, "stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East". It's hard not to agree with Iran's ambassador to Damascus, Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, when he says that the US is using the old British imperial tactic of divide and rule, sowing discord among Sunnis and Shi'ites to try to isolate Iran......

Nasrallah - who night after night is never allowed to sleep in the same place - is the number one target not only of these Salafi-jihadis but also of Jordanian intelligence, faithful to "axis of fear" stalwart and staunch US ally King Abdullah. On an Arab street level, Nasrallah remains the undisputed top politician all over the Middle East, be it among Sunnis or Shi'ites: in Damascus his posters are found even in Christian and Armenian businesses......

Hezbollah is a solid block, the Mehdi Army has splintered into at least three factions. Hezbollah is not sectarian, unlike at least two of the Mehdi Army's factions still engaged in attacks against Sunni civilians.....

It all boils down to the same game: smashing any true nationalist resistance movement, whatever it takes, to the benefit of easily pliable client regimes. Thus the Nuri al-Maliki client regime in Iraq killing Sunnis (and, as much as possible, also Sadrists); the Abbas client regime in Palestine against Hamas; the Siniora client regime in Lebanon attacking Hezbollah. In appropriate newspeak the surge for a region-wide Sunni-Shi'ite war is then labeled as "support for democracy" and spun on pliant corporate media. The repressive, retrograde House of Saud couldn't be a better partner in this "peace process" - as it sees nationalists such as Nasrallah, Muqtada and Hamas leader Khalid Meshal as the plague......

Hezbollah has a sound proposal for breaking the Lebanese deadlock now: new elections or a referendum. The US's clients keep saying no. Nasrallah will have to wait. He may already be the most clever - and popular - statesman in the Middle East. But the true test of his caliber will not be to offer tangible proof that Hezbollah is not a puppet of Syria and Iran; it will be to offset the specter of a regional, US-encouraged, Sunni-Shi'ite war."

By Michael Scheuer
Asia Times

".....Today, the process thus described seems to be ongoing. In Iraq, it seems clear that Afghan instructors have slowly inculcated among Iraqi fighters the skills they acquired while learning to counter Soviet attack and transport helicopters with such weapons as heavy machine guns (12.7mm and 14.5mm) and rocket-propelled grenades.

During the anti-Soviet jihad, the Afghans gradually developed this skill which tellingly punished the Soviet helicopter fleet, and which was later greatly augmented by the addition of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The transfer of this skill to the Iraqis appears to have taken some time as it is only in the past year that a significant number of US helicopters have been downed.

The other major skill the Iraqi Sunni insurgents have acquired from the Afghan theater is, as noted above, the use of electronic media. The Iraqis' skill in this regard almost certainly represents the major contribution made by the al-Qaeda fighters who came from Afghanistan to support the Iraqi jihad under the leadership of long-time senior Osama bin Laden insurgent commander Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.

In Afghanistan, the contribution of the Iraqi insurgents is clear in three areas. First, the Afghan Islamists' use of remotely detonated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has expanded both in number and skillful employment during the past two years. The use of IEDs was haphazard and minimally effective during the jihad against the Soviets and in the first year after the US invasion.

By late 2003, however, the use and lethality of IEDs in Afghanistan were increasing and a senior British officer there attributed that reality directly to skills acquired by the Afghans from the Iraqis. "There is no doubt," Colonel Mike Griffiths told the media. "There are now indications of technology transfer from Iraq. Some of the things we have seen in Iraq we are beginning to see here." Today, highly lethal IEDs are a fact of daily life for coalition forces.

The second contribution from Iraq appears to be the suicide bomber, although the Afghans are not yet as skilled and accurate as the Iraqis in using this weapon. Suicide attacks were all but unheard of during the 13-year struggle (1979-1992) between the Afghan mujahideen and the Soviet and Afghan communists. Since the Afghan election in September 2005, however, the number of insurgent attacks featuring suicide operatives has grown from a few dozen to hundreds, a reality that senior Taliban leaders have suggested is the result of the "Iraqi mujahideen" who are in Afghanistan "to support us in suicide attacks and operations".

Finally, the Taliban appear to have adopted a set of brutal counter-intelligence techniques that are common in Iraq, but have previously been applied in a hit-and-miss manner in Afghanistan. In the last year or so, for example, the Taliban have developed a fairly systematic process of identifying Afghans who are providing information to President Hamid Karzai's regime, coalition forces or Pakistani intelligence, kidnapping and killing them and often members of their family, and then broadcasting the news of the executions to dissuade others from similar activity.

At times, Taliban intelligence has even beheaded suspected informers, an action which has not yet induced the same level of popular revulsion that it did in Iraq in 2005-2006. All told, the 2005 words of Iraq-trained Taliban field commander Mohammed Daud ring true: "I am explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq. I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and experience of the glorious Iraqi resistance." "

The Bush administration's war vocabulary and imagery of the past four years is missing in action. The "turned corners", "tipping points" and "milestones" on the way to "victory" have disappeared. A new set of words and images is being implanted, which mine a deep vein in the US national psyche: the belief in an all-American right to a second chance.

By Tom Engelhardt
Asia Times

"......All of this, of course, is an extraordinary language in which to frame events in Iraq so many disastrous years after the invasion, with history's judgment already weighing so heavily on our president's plan to take down Saddam and recreate "the Greater Middle East" in an American image. All of this is no less extraordinary - verging on obscenity - as a collective description of a world of death, destruction, and mayhem in which, in a completely unremarkable Iraqi day - this Monday - the "early" tallies showed six GIs and 69 Iraqis killed and 39 wounded (and we're only talking about immediately reported bodies here); while on the previous day, five GIs, two Britons, and 109 Iraqis died (with 173 were wounded), and on the day before that, 164 Iraqis were killed, 345 injured, and 26 kidnapped. In terms only of the recorded dead of those three "normal" days of "stability and security" under the president's "surge" plan, we're talking, in terms of the dead, about the equivalent of more than 12 Virginia-Tech-style massacres..........

Among the stranger aspects of the war is this: at least three foundational pieces of the American occupation of Iraq have essentially gone nameless. Yet, without them, the last years can make little sense. Amid the endless interviews, news conferences, press briefings, radio addresses, speeches, and talk radio and television interviews that come out of this administration in weekly, if not daily, surges - the tens upon tens of thousands of words that pour from Washington and the Green Zone of Baghdad - these three subjects remain largely unmentioned, largely uncovered in a media that has relied so heavily on the administration's framing of the issues. Where there is no language, of course, things exist in consciousness in, at best, the most shadowy of forms, leaving Americans tongue-tied on matters of genuine import.

Here they are in brief order......

But make no mistake, whatever words may be wielded, that "clock" of General Petraeus's is indeed ticking - loudly enough to be a bomb. Sooner or later, it will go off and whether it proves to be an alarm, waking Congress and the American people, or an explosion demolishing some aspect of our world remains unknown. In June or August or October, when horrific reality in Iraq outpaces whatever the Bush administration tries to call it, we may have our answer and perhaps then reality will name us."

The question is:

Do you believe that Arab countries have appropriately dealt with Iraqi refugees?

With over 6,000 responding so far, 91% said no.

Palestinian Chief Beggar Asks for Forgiveness From His Master, the Princess of Darkness.......
Palestinians: Celebrate!

....بالروح بالدم نفديك يا هبيل عفوا يا زعيم يا خبيل يا

Arab "Reforms"

Azmi Bishara is the only Palestinian leader of international stature expressing a vision and strategy that is relevant to all Palestinians and can effectively challenge Zionism. That is why he is in fear for his life, safety and future while the quisling "president" Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah receives money and weapons from the United States and tea and cakes from Ehud Olmert.


An Excellent Piece

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

"The Israeli state and the Zionist movement have begun their latest assault in their century-long struggle to rid Palestine of its indigenous people and transform their country into a Jewish supremacist enclave: the persecution of Azmi Bishara, one of the most important Palestinian national leaders and thinkers working today. This case has enormous significance for the Palestinian solidarity movement......

Bishara sees Israel's latest gambit as signalling a change in the "rules of the game." If he, an elected official, a well-known public figure can face such tactics, what will the rest of the community face? Indeed, the recent publication by leading Palestinians in Israel of a report calling for mild reforms to the Israeli state prompted Israel's secret police, the Shin Bet (which operates torture and death squads in the occupied territories) to warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means" ("Arab leaders air public relations campaign against Shin Bet," Ha'aretz, 6 April 2007). (There is precedent for such disruption not only against Palestinians, but even against Israel's Mizrahi Jews whose attempts to organize against Ashkenazi discrimination were destroyed by the Shin Bet -- see Joseph Massad's book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question.)

Palestinian solidarity activists must understand and act on the signal Israel is sending by persecuting Bishara. For years, the mainstream Palestinian movement and its allies have buried their heads in the slogan "end the occupation." If it ever was, this vision is no longer broad enough. We must recognize that Israel's war against Palestinians does not discriminate among Palestinians, sparing some and condemning others. It does however take different forms, depending on where Palestinians are. Those in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under an extreme form of military tyranny now often called "apartheid," though it is increasingly apparent that it is something even worse. Palestinians inside Israel's 1948 borders live under a system of laws, policies and practices that exclude them politically and oppress them economically and socially. Millions of Palestinians outside the country are victimized by racist laws that forbid their return for the sole reason that they are not Jews......"

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

".....In a wide-ranging interview, we spoke about US wars from Iraq to Vietnam, about resistance and about academia. I asked Chomsky about political science professor Norman Finkelstein - one of the country's foremost critics of Israeli policy - and his battle to receive tenure at Depaul University where has taught for six years. Finkelstein's tenure has been approved at the departmental and college level but the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it. A final decision is expected to be made by May. Finkelstein has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an interview with the Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz admitted that he had sent a letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure. I asked Noam Chomsky about the dispute.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The whole thing is outrageous. I mean, he's an outstanding scholar. He has produced book after book. He's got recommendations from some of the leading scholars in the many areas in which he has worked. The faculty -- the departmental committee unanimously recommended him for tenure. It's amazing that he hasn't had full professorship a long time ago.

And, as you were saying, there was a huge campaign led by a Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, to try in a desperate effort to defame him and vilify him, so as to prevent him from getting tenure. The details of it are utterly shocking, and, as you said, it got to the point where the DePaul administration called on Harvard to put an end to this.

AMY GOODMAN: That's very significant, for one university to call on the leadership of another university to stop one of its professors.

NOAM CHOMSKY: To stop this maniac, yeah. What's behind it? It’s very simple and straightforward. Norman Finkelstein wrote a book, which is in fact the best compendium that now exists of human rights violations in Israel and the blocking of diplomacy by Israel and the United States, which I mentioned -- very careful scholarly book, as all of his work is, impeccable -- also about the uses of anti-Semitism to try to silence a critical discussion.

And the framework of his book was a critique of a book of apologetics for atrocities and violence by Alan Dershowitz. That was the framework. So he went through Dershowitz’s shark claims, showed in great detail that they are completely false and outrageous, that he's lying about the facts, that he’s an apologist for violence, that he’s a passionate opponent of civil liberties -- which he is -- and he documented it in detail.

Dershowitz is intelligent enough to know that he can’t respond, so he does what any tenth-rate lawyer does when you have a rotten case: you try to change the subject, maybe by vilifying opposing counsel. That changes the subject. Now we talk about whether, you know, opposing counsel did or did not commit this iniquity. And the tactic is a very good one, because you win, even if you lose. Suppose your charges against are all refuted. You’ve still won. You’ve changed the subject. The subject is no longer the real topic: the crucial facts about Israel, Dershowitz’s vulgar apologetics for them, which sort of are reminiscent of the worst days of Stalinism. We’ve forgotten all of that. We’re now talking about whether Finkelstein did this, that and the other thing. And even if the charges are false, the topic's been changed. That's the basis of it.

Dershowitz has been desperate to prevent this book from being -- first of all, he tried to stop it from being published, in an outlandish effort, which I’ve never seen anything like it, hiring a major law firm to threaten libel suits, writing to the governor of California -- it was published by the University of California Press. When he couldn't stop the publication, he launched a jihad against Norman Finkelstein, simply to try to vilify and defame him, in the hope that maybe what he’s writing will disappear. That’s the background.

It’s not, incidentally, the first time. I mean, actually, I happen to be very high on Dershowitz's hit list, hate list. And he has also produced outlandish lies about me for years: you know, I told him I was an agnostic about the Holocaust and I wouldn't tell him the time of day, you know, and so on and so forth.

AMY GOODMAN: You mean that he made that charge against you?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Of course, and on and on. I won’t even talk about it. What's the reason? It's in print......."

Click Here to Watch, Listen or Read Transcript

Palestinian policemen push and point their weapons at journalists during a rally calling for the release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza April 17, 2007.

The PA "Police," the Same as the Thugs of any Dictatorial Arab Regime, Forcefully Broke up the Journalists' Demonstration.

"Gaza - Ma'an - Five Palestinian journalists were injured after being attacked by police guarding the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building in Gaza.

The journalists were demonstrating against the abduction of BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

The police attacked the journalists with rifles and many sustained bruises. The journalists were forced to return to the strike tent in the centre of the city.

Ma'an's reporter said that he and dozens others of his colleagues "were protesting and then were attacked by the police and obliged to return to the tent".

Some other reporters confirmed the attack and said that the guards threatened to shoot the journalists if they continue their protest in the area.....

The Palestinian journalists' union issued a statement saying that the assaults on the journalists were "dangerous and against democracy."

The statement called for an immediate investigation into the attack on the journalists in Gaza.

Te Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also condemned the attack on the journalists and called for an investigation into the assaults.

The PFLP urged the information minister to carry out his responsibilities and intervene for the protection of journalists. "

Although Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has withdrawn his six ministers from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet, he has not gone as far as pulling his deputies out of Parliament. That would surely have scuttled the Iraqi government. Despite what they want the world to believe, Muqtada and Maliki need each other, if only to keep their nemesis - former premier Iyad Allawi - out of power.

By Sami Moubayed
Asia Times

"DAMASCUS - The relationship between Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appeared to have taken a major downturn on Monday when Muqtada withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet. Appearances, though, especially in Byzantine Iraqi politics, can be deceptive.....

Significantly, though, Muqtada did not withdraw his 30 deputies from the 275-seat Parliament. Had he done that, it would automatically have brought down not only the Maliki cabinet but the entire Iran-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) that heads Parliament and in which the Sadrists are a leading group.

Muqtada and Maliki apparently want the world to believe that they are no longer friends. They have not become enemies, however; at least not yet......

As far as Muqtada and Maliki are concerned, they are willing to work with the devil - or each other - to defeat Allawi."

A Significant Article

By Robert D. Novak
The Washington Post

"On April 7, ending a seven-day visit to Israel, I finally got an interview I had sought for a year. I sat down in a Palestinian Authority office in Ramallah with a leader of Hamas, the extremist organization that won last year's elections. This leader pushed a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution and deplored suicide bombers. But officials in Washington seem not to want to hear Hamas calling for peace.

No fringe character, this was Naser al-Shaer: education minister and deputy prime minister in the new coalition government. Shaer signaled that the regime recognizes Israel's right to exist and forgoes violence -- conditions essential for talks about a viable Palestinian state adjoining Israel -- even if Hamas does not. "We hope that it is going to be a matter of time," Shaer told me. "But there is a big chance now."

When I returned to Washington last week, I sought the reaction of Bush administration officials (who refuse to have any contact with Hamas). I asked to talk to Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser who is most influential in policy on Israel. Abrams was once a fellow Cold Warrior and friend whom I have defended, but an aide let me know on Thursday that Abrams would not talk to me about Hamas. A senior State Department official also showed no interest in what Shaer said.......

I was back in Jerusalem on April 3, two weeks after Hamas brought the more moderate opposition Fatah party into the new national unity government. The Los Angeles Times had just run a remarkable op-ed by the new government's finance minister, Salam Fayyad, a political independent who lived in Washington for 20 years, served as a World Bank official and is well respected in the West. Fayyad wrote that the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1993 acceptance of Israel and disavowal of violence is "a crystal-clear and binding agreement" that "no Palestinian government has the authority to revoke." He added that the unity government's platform "explicitly" pledges to honor all PLO commitments.

Over dinner in a Ramallah restaurant on April 4, Fayyad told me that he offered his column simultaneously to several major American newspapers to get this story out quickly. But do his Hamas colleagues accept his reasoning? Fayyad made clear that he was not flying solo.

Just before my trip ended, the Palestinian Authority put me in touch with Shaer. On Aug. 19, when he was deputy prime minister in the all-Hamas regime, Shaer was seized in an Israeli raid of his Ramallah home and held for a month without charges or evidence.

In his ministry office a few days later, Shaer, who holds a doctorate from England's University of Manchester, looked nothing like the shirt-sleeved, tie-less man photographed when he was released in September. He was dressed in a stylish suit, but more telling than his appearance was what he said.

When I asked whether Hamas agreed with Fayyad's formulation, Shaer said it did not matter: "We are talking about the government, not groups." He said Hamas was no more relevant to Palestinian policy than the views of extremist anti-Palestinian cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman are to Israeli policy. Unexpectedly, Shaer expressed dismay that "previous attempts at peace were ruined by suicide bombers. Now, we look forward to a sustained peace."

While avoiding Israel-bashing, Shaer conjectured: "I don't think the Israeli government wants a two-state solution. Without pressure from the president of the United States, nothing is going to happen." That sounded like a plea for help from George W. Bush. But will he hear it if Elliott Abrams does not listen?"

***

"Without pressure from the president of the United States, nothing is going to happen"

It is Oslo, all over again; this time championed by Hamas. Celebrate Oslo II, Now!

I really like this cartoon.

It shows a Palestinian resistance fighter declaring, "My name is so and so; I belong to such and such organization; I live in such and such town, on such and such street, down such and such lane; I am warning the Israeli colonizers that I will be firing on such and such colony and therefore they have been forewarned!"

The woman turns to him and says, "You (Palestinians) have learned nothing from Hizbullah!"

An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades: we will capture soldiers to release Palestinian prisoners

"Bethlehem - Ma'an – The An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), affirmed that all options are open to bring about the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including the capturing of more Israeli soldiers.

A statement issued by the brigades said "we will work hard and use all means to capture more soldiers and exchange them with Palestinian prisoners".

The statement also called on the Palestinian Authority to move immediately to release the prisoners.

The brigades also urged the international community to intervene in this issue and pressure Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. "

***

Talk is cheap...keep making statements, and while you are at it give the names, telephone numbers and addresses of those making the threats, so that they will get "credit."

Will the Palestinians ever learn?

By Mike Luckovich

An Excellent Debate
Contributed by Datta

"......James Petras: Well, I think I would probably argue that the pro-Israel lobby, the Zionist Lobby, is the dominant factor in shaping US policy in the Middle East, particularly in the most recent period. And I think one has to look at this beyond AIPAC. I mean, we have to look a whole string of pro-Zionist think tanks from the American Enterprise Institute on down, and then we have to look at a whole power configuration, which not only involves AIPAC, but also the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, which number 52. We have to look at individuals occupying crucial positions in the government, as we had recently with Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others. We have to look at the army of op-ed writers who have access to the major newspapers. We have to look at the super-rich contributors to the Democratic Party, Media moguls etc. And I think this, together with the leverage in Congress and in the Executive, is the decisive factor in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East. And I want to emphasize that.......

Norman Finkelstein: There is an Israeli agenda, and I am not disputing it. The Israeli agenda is basically the following: Israel does not care which country you smash up in the Middle East, just so long as, every few years and, sometimes, every few months you smash up this or that Arab country to send a lesson or to transmit the message to the Middle East that we are in charge and whenever you get out of line we are going to take out the ‘big club’ and break your skull. Now, it happens that in the late 1990’s that Israel would have preferred the skull that was cracked would have been the Iranian one. There was no evidence that Iraq was upper most on the Israeli agenda.......

James Petras: Its very strange that one says Wolfowitz was not influenced by the Israeli agenda when he was caught passing documents to Israel in the 1980’s. And Douglas Feith lost his security clearance for handing documents to Israel. Elliott Abrams has written a book calling for maintaining the ‘purity’ of the Jewish race…

Norman Finkelstein: I know. They write that crap…and you believe them? Jim, do you think they care…?

James Petras: Its not a question of believing them, it’s a question of looking at the documentary evidence of uncritical, support for Israel in all of its policies - A position that is taken by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. They give unconditional support!.....

James Petras: Let me finish my last comment. I think when the Pentagon offices are flooded, like a crowded bordello on Saturday night, with Israeli intelligence officers, crowding out even members of their own Pentagon staff – full of Mossad, full of Israeli generals, in the making of Iraq policy, I don’t think you can say that they are ‘just any old Pentagon officials’. I think you can’t dismiss the fact that Feith, Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams have a lifetime commitment to putting Israel’s interests as their prime consideration in the Middle East. I think it is absurd to think that somehow they just happen to be right-wing policy makers that happen to support a militarist policy. Wolfowitz designed the program. Feith put together the Office of Special Plans, the policy board that fabricated the information for the Iraq war. They were constantly consulting on a day-day, hour-to-hour basis with the Israeli government. This has absolutely been documented a hundred times and I think it is impossible to deny this and say ‘Well, you can’t deduce policy from ethnic affiliations.” Yes, you can! When that ethnic group puts forward a position that puts the primacy of a foreign government at the center of their foreign policy and prejudices the lives of thousands of Americans…its economic interests in the area…then it’s absurd to say, ‘These are a bunch of irrational policy-makers.’.....

James Petras: Look, if you are trying to set up a matrix of power, dealing with US policy-making in the Middle East, to simply say that this is ‘shared interests’ without looking at the fact that the Israelis blew up a US surveillance ship, killing scores of US sailors and get away with it and continue to get US economic aid and the US officers that were wounded or murdered by the Israeli warplanes, with US flags flying over the ship, and say…that’s overlapping interests. That’s chutzpah! That is really chutzpah. And it is very revealing that you went into a detailed explanation, or purported to be explanation, about the Suez, that you leave out that in 1967 the Israelis are the only country in US history that bombs a US ship and doesn’t even have to apologize – and receives no retaliation from the United States. Now that is ‘power’ for you. That’s ‘influence’ for you. And I thank to deny these realities…and say: ‘this is just overlapping interests, the Zionists have no power in the US government or if they are Zionists then they are not tied to Israel etc..’ That’s a strange kind of Zionist that doesn’t have allegiance to the state of Israel......"

What a Lousy Excuse For Leadership.....
Give Us Back Hajj Amin Husseini! Now!

If we are to see this conflict resolved, it must be based on mutual understanding and acceptance as well as a breakdown of racism and supremacy in all its forms.

By Remi Kanazi

"The latest back and forth between Israel and the Palestinian unity government (and its regional interlocutors) will not bring peace to fruition. Many respected commentators in the Middle East have accused Israel of rejecting peace, primarily due to its refusal to fully embrace the Arab peace initiative. Yet this initiative, when entered into the international community’s trash compactor of “pragmatism,” will leave the Palestinian people with nothing more than an old, albeit neatly packaged, version of the Oslo Accords. These commentators’ near-sighted, almost desperate view, which is predicated on the notion that anything is better than the squalor Palestinians are living in today, will only further devastate the Palestinian people. It is one thing to compromise on the implementation of the rights of Palestinians, but it is quite another to diverge from one’s principles based on “new realities” imposed on the conflict by one’s adversary. We must never forget the lessons of the Oslo period, nor can we forget that after 40 years of compromise and conciliatory action, Palestinian suffering has been exponentially magnified. The professed pragmatist line only diminishes the rights of the oppressed, strengthens the oppressor’s position, and makes a mockery of institutions (i.e. the United Nations) whose many functions ostensibly include the protection of persecuted peoples......

This leads back to the Arab peace initiative. There are already signs of Hamas being corrupted by the pragmatist line to ensure its power in the occupied territories. This is not to say that negotiations can’t and shouldn’t take place, but at this point, on all five sides (Hamas, Fatah, Israel, the US, and the Quartet), intention substantively matters more than words and action. The “disengagement” of Gaza led to widespread suffering, settlements doubled during the Oslo years, and after free and fair democratic elections, sanctions were placed on the Palestinian government. This goes to show how seemingly positive actions, when combined with sinister ulterior motives, can be even more damaging than the status quo. If steps are taken to improve the lives of Palestinians on a permanent basis, it should be welcomed, but neither Hamas nor Fatah should be tempted by calls for negotiations in return for, what would be, short-term political capitalization......"

Paul Wolfowitz carries the strongest of the worst – a sanctimonious conservative worldview couched in the wonderful terms of peace and democracy accompanying the hawkish pre-emptive nuclear capability that he is author of, both directed at the preservation of Israel.

By Jim Miles
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

"One of the most influential figures in the current American government is Paul Wolfowitz with a history that takes him back more than a generation to the Reagan era and the renewed militarism of the United States and its emphasis on nuclear armaments. Wolfowitz is a Jewish neocon, with strong ties to the Israeli government and the Jewish lobby in America. He is a student of Wohlstetter, one of the early academic formulaters of a policy supporting the use of nuclear weapons in an increasingly antagonistic and imperative political foreign policy. Like most of the other neocons who are adamant war hawks, he has not seen any active service, nor did he have to invent any excuses to avoid it. That is one of the fuller ironies of the current crop of American militarists – perhaps if they had actually suffered through the horrors of warfare they might not be so fond of promulgating it. More so, given their supposed intellect, it is an intellect blinded by narrow egotism and ignorant hubris that their way is the only way. Wolfowitz appears to fit this description remarkably well.......

After the first Iraq war, Wolfowitz penned a Defence Planning Guide (1992) that denied other nations the aspirations to “protect their legitimate interests” and to “discourage them from challenging our leadership” by maintaining the “mechanisms for deterring poptential competitiros from even aspiring” to a larger role.[38] Wolfowitz had been “indiscreet” but his message carried through to the younger Bush regime.

Combined with the rationalizing intellect for the irrational use of nuclear weapons, Wolfowitz carries his Jewish heritage, and his acknowledged interest in a strong Jewish state. In a pro-Israeli rally speech, Wolfowitz closed by praying, “May God bless America, may God bless Israel, and may God bless all the peacemakers in the world.”[39]. Too many ironies and hypocrisies abound in all these characters about their professions for peace and their advocacy of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear) and terror (missiles and bombs) that they hardly need to be pointed out. While he is “circumspect in public….it is clear that at bottom Israel is a major interest and may be the principal reason for his near obsession with the effort…to dump Saddam Hussein, remake the Iraqi government in an American image and then further redraw the Middle East by accomplishing the same goals in Syria, Iran and perhaps other countries.”......."

A Good Article

By Haidar Eid

"......A serious comprehensive solution to the Palestinian question will not, therefore, neglect the 1948 Palestinians and those who were expelled and dispossessed of their lands in 1948, namely, refugees living in miserable camps. The mechanism by which such serious issues can be resolved is not a bantustanization in the style of South African apartheid as suggested by the signatories of the Oslo Accords. Rather, a secular democratic state where all citizens are treated equally regardless of their religion, sex or color, is the right solution that brings an end to the conflict. This is partly what Bishara’s programme is about; this is the reason behind the current campaign; and this is why the Palestinian national identity of Israeli-Palestinians is considered a threat to the Zionist establishment.

Azmi Bishara is what the official Palestinian leadership is NOT. Charisma combined with a political vision and a clear-cut ideological programme. Whereas the Palestinian leadership is prepared to recognize a "Jewish state" alongside a Palestinian state regardless of what this means, namely the discriminatory practices applied by Israel against its non-Jewish, i.e. mainly Palestinian citizens and residents since 1948, Bishara’s programme makes the necessary link between all Palestinian struggles against the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and against Israel's ethnically-based displacement, dispossession, discrimination and rights' violations of about 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, including some 250,000 internally displaced, as well as the 1948-externally displaced refugees, who are entitled to return, restitution and “Israeli citizenship” under international law."

By Danny Rubinstein

"The recent affair concerning the criminal investigation of MK Azmi Bishara, the Israeli Arab Balad party chairman who has left the country, has spawned a multitude of journalistic reports and commentaries. Palestinian political commentator Hassan al-Batal went as far as to write that the lawmaker "could have become the Palestinian Herzl," referring to the founder of Zionism.

The Arab media as a whole have applauded him. A journalist from the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat interviewed a young woman from southern Lebanon, who predicted that Bishara would one day become president of the Palestinian state. He reminded her that Bishara was a member of the Israeli Knesset, and that he belonged to the Palestinian Christian minority. She was unfazed, insisting that he was the best choice precisely because of his intimate knowledge of "Zionist fascism."

The Nazareth-based newspaper Hadith Al-Nas ran an article predicting that Bishara would not become another Mahmoud Darwish, the Arab-Israeli poet who left Israel in the 1970s. The article did not seek to slight Bishara; it just suggested that he would not leave the country as he himself said in one of his interviews......

MKs Ahmed Tibi and Mohammed Barakeh are well-known figures in the Arab world, due to their frequent appearances in Arab foreign media outlets. However, keen observers might have noticed that while they have been presented as lawmakers, Bishara is considered to be a thinker, an Arab nationalist.

These details assume special importance in light of the possibility that the Arab-Israeli minority could in the future become a key factor in the regional dispute. The map is simple enough to decipher: If Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail to reach an agreement based on a two-state solution, the only alternative would be a single-state solution. There is no other prospect.

This single state would not be a "secular democratic nation," as the PLO advocated in the past, nor would it be a state of all its citizens, which is the cause Bishara has set out to realize. The strong Jewish majority would not allow that. The only option remaining would be an apartheid state, whose first signs - and possibly more than just that - are already visible in the West Bank and in Gaza.

In this case, the struggle in store for the Arabs of the occupied territories would be directed to achieving equal rights and equality within the State of Israel. This would include establishing full unity between them and the Arab Israeli minority - a unity that does not exist today. If that happens, then who knows what will occur: Azmi Bishara could very well go down in history as the "Palestinian Herzl." "

"Diplomatic sources on Sunday said Israel supports the implementation of the Dayton plan for the training and arming of the Palestinian Presidential Guard, loyal to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

They made the statement following a meeting between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday......

At the meeting, the Palestinian delegation relayed the details of the plan the Palestinian Authority had devised with the assistance of Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator to the PA.

The sources said Dayton had procured a $59-million budget for two main objectives. The first of these is reinforcement of the Presidential Guard with additional weapons, ammunition, equipment, training and funds. The second is to secure the Palestinian side of the Karni Crossing, which is the lifeline of the economy in the Gaza Strip.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, the government's most senior contact to Dayton, has discussed the plan with the American coordinator in recent weeks.

Egypt and Jordan have agreed to train the 1,500 soldiers of the Presidential Guard, most of whom are to be deployed in the Gaza Strip. Arab countries from the Persian Gulf have agreed to provide additional funding for the plan.

The guard already received an initial shipment of assault rifles from Egypt several months ago. The sources noted that Abbas had promised Olmert that the soldiers of the guard will be deployed along the Philadelphi Route in Rafah, in an attempt to foil arms smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip.

Additionally, Olmert and Abbas agreed to continue to participate in the meetings of the joint security committee of Egypt, the PA, the U.S. and Israel. The committee's meeting were renewed recently after they had been suspended......"


***

Big celebrations are now called for to celebrate the new "security plan" devised by, and being implemented by Brother Keith Dayton, THE COMMANDER OF PALESTINIAN FORCES!

Long live Palestinian-Israeli-U.S. unity!

National Union of Journalists of Britain and Ireland decides to boycott Israeli products in protest of Second Lebanon War and ‘Israeli aggression in Gaza’; calls on UK government to impose sanctions on Israel

"The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) of Britain and Ireland decided during its annual meeting in Birmingham on Friday to boycott Israeli products in protest of the Second Lebanon War and “Israeli aggression in Gaza.”

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 66 to 54, called for a boycott of Israeli goods “similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations."......"

Foreign policy advisers to the 'big three' Democrats bode ill for antiwar movement

By Justin Raimondo

"Anyone who had illusions about the Democratic Party as the electoral vehicle of choice for the antiwar movement has got to be dispirited by the "big three" presidential wannabes: John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. None have come out clearly and unequivocally for withdrawal from Iraq, and all refuse to rule out military action against Iran. The situation appears even worse when we look at who's advising them when it comes to foreign policy. A recent cover piece in the New York Observer throws the spotlight on these otherwise obscure (yet important) figures – hat tip: Matt Yglesias – and the result isn't pretty.

The "Iraq-eteers" are a "collegial" group, we are told, and, while there are differences of emphasis, all fit within the parameters of conventional liberal internationalism – of the sort that got us into Vietnam and will help keep us in Iraq. Particularly disappointing for principled opponents of interventionism is one Derek Chollet, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, which advocates a "centrist foreign policy," i.e., interventionism, but with less melodramatic flair than the neoconservatives over at the Project for a New American Century......

Chollet tells us to "prepare for the worst" – and, if Edwards gets into the White House, we may have to. With Bush and the other Republicans, at least we know what we're getting: perpetual war. When it comes to the Democrats, however, we run into the danger of thinking we are getting a foreign policy based on sweet reason when what we're in for is the same old interventionist crap. These people sit around in their offices every day thinking up new ways to meddle in the affairs of foreign peoples. They are perpetually "concerned" about this "crisis" or that "turning point," and they are constantly warning us that "time is running out." Unless "we" – meaning the U.S. government – do something, the world as we know it will end.

That is a delusion, of course, and a dangerous one, but there you have it: it's the culture of the Washington policy wonks, who assume government action is the solution to each and every problem, both nationally and internationally. To these little lords of creation, there is no problem they can't come up with a government-funded solution to. Skepticism about the limits (or morality) of American power abroad is limited to "far left" commentators such as Noam Chomsky and Alex Cockburn, or Republican "realists" such as John Mearsheimer and Andrew Bacevich. Self-proclaimed "centrists" of the Edwards-Chollet variety are always interventionists......"

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Bendib

A Long Article Contributed by Fatima

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate.

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community.

"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said......

The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953......

In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."

That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.......

Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book -- to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.

Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that it not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.

Former President Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November, stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well....."

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

"BAGHDAD, 15 April 2007 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who are stranded on the Iraq-Syria border have staged an open sit-in since 12 April to draw international attention to what they say is their ongoing suffering.

“Our situation is getting worse from day to day, yet no one sees what we’re going through and helps us get through this ordeal,” Qussai Mohammed Saleh, a 32-year-old Palestinian refugee, told IRIN in a phone interview from al-Waleed border camp......

“It’s been raining cats and dogs for the past two days and the heavy rain has filled our tents with water. We demand that Arab and international leaders take an immediate decision about us. There’s only one goal for us and that’s to get out of Iraq as soon as possible without being hurt. We’ll continue with our sit-in until we achieve this goal.”.......

The killing and the raid prompted the United Nations Refugees Agency (UNHCR) to reiterate its calls to the Iraqi government to protect Palestinian refugees in Iraq. The agency also appealed to Arab governments to allow the Palestinians into their territories.

UNHCR said at least 186 Palestinians have been murdered in Baghdad between April 2004 and January 2007, while about 15,000 Palestinians remain in Iraq, fewer than half the number who had lived there previously. "

عبد الباري عطوان

".......خطر هذه اللقاءات لا ينحصر فقط في القضايا الثانوية والهامشية التي تبحثها، وانما في اعطائها ايحاء خاطئا للعالم بأسره بان العملية السلمية بين الفلسطينيين والاسرائيليين تسير في الاتجاه الصحيح، وربما يعطي الذريعة والمبرر لبعض الاطراف العربية والدولية للإقدام علي خطوات تطبيعية اكثر مع الدولة العبرية....

...الدكتور صائب عريقات كبير المفاوضين الفلسطينيين بشرنا بان الرئيس عباس وصديقه اولمرت (تعانقا قبل اللقاء مرة اخري) بحثا خلال اجتماعهما في القدس المحتلة الافق السياسي لعملية السلام للمرة الاولي، ولكن بشارته هذه لم تدم الا بضع دقائق عندما اكد متحدث اسرائيلي ان الرجلين لم يبحثا مطلقا في القضايا الشائكة المتعلقة بالوضع النهائي. وهذا يعني امرا من اثنين، وهو ان الدكتور عريقات يبيع الشعب الفلسطيني املا كاذبا بحدوث تقدم، او ان المتحدث الاسرائيلي يكذب، ولا نعتقد ان الاخير يكذب، لانه يعبر عن موقف اسرائيلي ثابت، وللأسف الشديد، في هذا الخصوص......

....وسط هذه اللقاءات العقيمة غير ذات الجدوي بين رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية ورئيس وزراء الدولة العبرية، نبحث عن الشريك الآخر في حكومة الوحدة الفلسطينية فلا نجد له اي حراك، وهو الذي كان، وحتي ما قبل صلح مكة شاغل الارض ومن عليها، بالمواقف المتشددة والتصريحات المنتقدة لأداء رئيس السلطة ومستشاريه.
فحتي متي تصمت حركة حماس علي هذا التهميش الذي يعيشه وزراؤها، رغم كل المرونة، ولا نقول التنازلات، التي قدمتها من اجل تشكيل هذه الحكومة، فلا هذه المرونة اثمرت في اقناع العالم والعرب في التعامل معها كجهة معترف بها، ولا كسرت الحصار المالي المفروض علي الشعب الفلسطيني منذ عام واكثر.
الحكومة بدأت حكومة وحدة وطنية وانتهت الي حكومة مكتب الرئيس ، ما تغير فقط هو التسمية. المستشارون اصبحوا وزراء، ومجلس الامن القومي حل مكان وزارة الداخلية، والاجهزة الامنية بقيت علي حالها مثل دار ابو سفيان .
نشهد حراكا لافتا داخل حركة فتح يحمل بذور تمرد علي قيادة شاخت، واخري تريد خطف الحركة وقرارها، وتوظيفها في خدمة المشروعين الامريكي والاسرائيلي، ولا نستغرب ان يكون هناك حراك مماثل داخل حركة حماس لانه من المستبعد ان يكون من تربي علي استعجال نيل الشهادة، والانتقال الي دار البقاء، علي استعداد لقبول الوضع الراهن. وهو وضع لا يتماشي مع ايديولوجية الحركة وادبياتها.
الساحة الفلسطينية تشهد مخاضا عسيرا وهو مخاض سيؤدي حتما الي انفجار يفاجيء الكثيرين بتغيرات غير محسوبة بل وغير متوقعة داخليا وخارجيا."

By Eric Margolis

"The death last Sunday of six Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan reminds us of Santayana’s famous maxim that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.

The soldiers were killed near Maiwand, a name meaning nothing to most Westerners. But there, on July 27, 1880, during the bloody Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British Empire suffered one of the worst defeats in its colonial history. Two years earlier the Raj (Britain’s Indian Empire) had invaded Afghanistan for a second time. The British put Afghan puppet rulers into power in Kabul and Kandahar.

Ayub Khan, son of Afghanistan’s former emir, rallied 12,000 Pashtun (or Pathan) tribal warriors to fight an advancing British force whose mission was, in London’s words, to “liberate” Afghan tribes and bring them “the light of Christian civilization.” Today, the slogan is “promoting democracy.” The fierce Afghan tribal warriors routed the imperial force, composed of British regulars, including the vaunted Grenadier Guards, and Indian Sepoy troops, after a ferocious battle......

The invasion of Afghanistan was marketed to Americans as an “anti-terrorist” mission and an effort to implant democracy. It was sold to Canadians as a noble campaign of “nation-building, reconstruction, and defending women’s rights.” All nice-sounding, but mostly untrue......

This week, the same think tank issued a shocking new survey based on 17,000 interviews. “Afghanis in southern Afghanistan are increasingly prepared to admit their support for Taliban, and belief that the government and international community will not be able to defeat the Taliban is widespread.” Senlis’ study concurs with my own findings in South Asia that Pakistan and India have independently concluded NATO will eventually be defeated in Afghanistan and withdraw. The U.S., however, may stay on and reinforce its 30,000 troops there because it cannot admit a second defeat after the Iraq debacle......"

"JERUSALEM: Israeli police on Sunday confirmed they are investigating a prominent Israeli Arab lawmaker, ending a weeklong silence but refusing to give further details about the bizarre case that has baffled the country.

Israeli media outlets have been reporting at length on the alleged charges against Azmi Bishara, a fiery Communist lawmaker, with speculation ranging from treason to corruption.

Bishara has left the country, surfacing in the Arab world and Europe, harshly criticizing the Jewish state and fueling speculation about whether he intended to remain in parliament or return to Israel at all.

Bishara has provoked anger among many Jewish Israelis by openly identifying with Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas. Critics charge he has encouraged violent attacks against Israel. Bishara has denied that.....

Bishara, 50, leads the National Democratic Assembly, which has three members of parliament. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, according to the parliament's Web site.

Throughout the ordeal, he has been visiting family in Jordan and speaking at conferences in Europe. His spokesman said Sunday that Bishara was currently in Bahrain and would return to Israel within a few days.

Bishara has given numerous interviews to Arab media in recent days in which he claims he was a victim of a political conspiracy, also indicating he planned to quit the parliament.

Interviewed Sunday by Al-Jazeera television, Bishara restated his intention to resign his seat in the Israeli legislature but did not say when.

In Israel, his party issued a statement denouncing what it called a "witchhunt" and "blood libel" and calling on authorities to lift the gag order and allow Bishara to clear his name. It said it was considering petitioning Israel's Supreme Court on Bishara's behalf.

Bishara has for years been a leading voice for Israel's Arab citizens, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

"The state is Jewish as long as there is a Jewish majority, but we are not ideologically Zionist. We cannot be," he said. "We are Palestinians."

He once summed up the situation of Arabs who found themselves part of Israel when it was formed in 1948 out of part of what had been British-ruled Palestine.

"We didn't come to Israel," he said. "Israel came to us."

He has come under fire for his frequent visits to Syria and Lebanon. His Jewish colleagues in parliament have frequently accused him of incitement against Israel for calling on Arabs around the world to support the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel.

Israelis were also shocked when on one of his trips to Syria, Bishara sat next to the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, at a memorial service for Syria's late President Hafez Assad."

Iraqi cleric Sadr's bloc to quit govt - officials

(Yeah, we heard that threat many times before, from this thug and his drill team)

"BAGHDAD, April 15 (Reuters) - The political movement of fiery Iraqi Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said on Sunday it would pull out from the government on Monday to press its demand for a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Officials from the movement, which holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Alliance, said the formal announcement would be made on Monday at a news conference.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis answered a call by Sadr to rally in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf last week to protest against the presence of some 140,000 U.S.-led forces in Iraq......"

U.S. Troops Killed so far in Iraq......,,...3,301

"Coalition" Troops Killed....................3,567

U.S. Troops Wounded......................24,645

"حماس" تحذّر الدول العربية من الانجرار وراء محاولات التطبيع الصهيونية

Hamas is warning the Arab regimes from falling in the trap of normalizing (gradually) with Israel without getting anything in return. However, Hamas sees no problem in forming a "unity government" with the traitor Abbas who himself is promising normalization with one billion Arabs and Muslims. A traitor who meets with Olmert every two weeks to receive instructions of Israeli demands to end Palestinian resistance and safeguard Israeli borders. A traitor who receives arms, money and training from the U.S. for the sole purpose of cracking down on the resistance and who coordinates with the Israelis on "security matters." This coordination has meant supplying the Israelis with the names of resistance fighters (to be killed or captured by Israel) and coordinating with the Israelis the storming of the PA jail in Jericho to capture imprisoned Palestinian leaders. "Brother Dahlan," who is the right-hand man of Abbas, recently asked Israel to give him the names of wanted Palestinians so that the PA can arrest them for Israel.

Who is Hamas kidding? Why does Hamas not clean its own house which has many Abbas "wannabes"?

"حذّرت حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" الدول العربية من "الانجرار وراء محاولات الكيان الصهيوني للتطبيع الشامل مع الدول العربية، من خلال التستر وراء الغموض واللاوضوح في من المبادرة العربية التي أكدت عليها القمة الأخيرة".

وقالت الحركة، على لسان متحدث باسمها في الضفة الغربية في بيان صحفي، تلقى "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" نسخة منه: "إن الكيان الصهيوني يخفي نوايا خبيثة من وراء ضبابيته في الإعلان عن موقفه الرسمي من المبادرة العربية، ويحاول بذلك مخادعة الدول العربية وجرها لدائرة التطبيع مع الاحتلال بلا مقابل من الطرف الصهيوني أو أي التزام تجاه المبادرة".

وأضاف المتحدث أن الموقف الصهيوني من المبادرة العربية "واضح وضوح الشمس حين وصفها (رئيس الوزراء الصهيوني السابق آرائيل) شارون بأنها لا تساوي الحبر الذي كتبت فيه"، مشيراً إلى أن "كل مغازلات (رئيس الوزراء الصهيوني إيهود) أولمرت للدول العربية لا ترمي إلا لمناورة سياسية تهدف إلى تخليص الكيان الصهيوني من تبعات الالتزام بالمبادرة وإحالتها إلى برنامج تطبيع كامل مع العرب".

وأكد أنه: "يجب على رؤساء الدول العربية أن لا تنطلي عليهم مثل هذه الألاعيب، وعليهم أن يستذكروا جيداً أن جنازير دبابات شارون كانت قد داست هذه المبادرة بعد يوم واحد من إقرارها في قمة بيروت حين أعادت قوات الاحتلال الصهيوني احتلال الضفة الغربية من جديد في عدوان السور الواقي سنة 2002".

وكان إيهود أولمرت قد صرح، قبيل ساعات من لقاءه مع رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس بأنه سيشعر بالسعادة حال إجراء مفاوضات مع الدول العربية، مشيراً إلى أن رغبته لا تمثل قبول أي موقف من هنا وهناك، في إشارة إلي موافقته للتفاوض على أساس المبادرة العربية. "

"....Dear Afflicted Iraqi People!
Today is the fourth anniversary of the occupation of our country by the global arrogant forces led by the United States of America.

This oppressor, unjust and aggressor state invaded our country under false pretexts and lie pretexts which they have already confessed.

They came under the name of democracy, liberalization and in the name of prosperity, in the name of happiness, and other terms that do not have any sense. We know the name and the name of democracy. They brought us destruction, sabotage, murder and bloodshed.

Indeed, this country does not entrust to the people who do not fear of Allah (swt) and do not take care of their people.

Dear Free Iraqis!

Indeed the night of the occupation ended. So, you should be patient and persistent adherence to the land. It is duty for you to be brothers and tolerant each other. Do not agree with the workers of occupation and the occupation itself which wants to separate you from each other on behalf of sectarianism, Shiism or others. Do not give any opportunity to them for using.

O our citizens from northern Iraq to the south, from east to the west!

Work together and cooperate for the expulsion of the occupation which is your first enemy.
Your enemy imposed sedition as using the names of Shia or Sunni, Kurd or Arab or others.

You should not give them an opportunity…

It is your first enemy. It uses the sedition among you in the name of Shia or Sunni, Arab or Kurds or others. Over the past four years the occupation is playing on this sedition in a way of known differences. They will not benefit from this way insaallah but at the end they will be devastated and lost.

They will be out of our country.

Unrepentant departure…

Shameful departure with the help of Allah Almighty......"

By Gideon Levy

"A call should be made to the Consumers Council: This is a case of wholesale fraud. In the sea of thieves, embezzlers and crooks around us, this is the largest deceit of all. The majority of Israeli citizens voted for a centrist government, perhaps even a bit left of center, and received one of the most extreme right-wing governments in the history of Israel.

The 28,000 participants in a recent survey by the BBC World Service in 27 countries ranked Olmert's Israel, together with Ahmadinejad's Iran, as the countries having the most negative influence on the world. The current government is largely responsible for the fact that Israelis do not care that they are viewed this way. In a country where people are quick to sue a travel agency for a vacation package that did not meet their expectations, the masses of voters who fell victim to the great fraud remain silent.

The settlers establish another illegal outpost in Hebron, and most Israelis are not interested in the most criminal settlement of them all. And what does their government say? A front is already forming to oppose the evacuation. The Arab League extends its hand for peace and the 52 percent of Israelis who have heard of the Saudi initiative say it could constitute a basis for negotiation. And what does their government say? It makes a sour face and quashes the chance. There are signs of a chance to liberate Gilad Shalit and create a new atmosphere with the Palestinians; 45 percent of Israelis are in favor of releasing prisoners "with blood on their hands" and only 36 percent are opposed. And their government? It categorically rejects the Palestinian proposal. The majority of Israelis tell the pollsters that they are in favor of establishing a Palestinian state and evacuating settlements. And what is their government doing to realize the aspirations of its voters? Not a thing. It has been a long time since such a wide disparity has existed between the views of the public and the government, a disparity that makes democracy look like a bandage......."

Palestinian presidential guard to deploy along Gaza-Egypt border to prevent weapons' smuggling, will also deploy along northern border to prevent Qassam launchings

"The prevention of weapons' smuggling was a key topic at a Sunday meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The meeting dealt with possible channels of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation.

Abbas and his associates presented a deployment plan for Palestinian presidential guards along the Philadelphi Route, as part of the effort to prevent weapons' smuggling to Gaza via Egypt.

The plan, according to American General Keith Dayton, also outlines the deployment of presidential guards along other areas of the Gaza border, in order to prevent terror operatives from launching Qassams, laying explosives and undertaking other violent activities.

The plan was derived as part of an effort to increase the strength of the presidential guards, using US support, in coordination with Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

During the meeting, Olmert and Abbas agreed on the continued operation of a multilateral committee comprised of Israelis, Egyptians, Americans and Palestinians, that will deal with the issue of weapons' smuggling prevention.

This committee has met several times in the past, but Olmert and Abbas both requested that the frequency of these meetings be increased......

Olmert requested that Abbas work to stop Qassam launchings immediately, prevent Hamas armament and secure the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit....."

***

Isn't "Palestinian unity" wonderful? The Palestinians are already reaping the rewards. Celebrate the "unity" now and stop "weapons smuggling," or else you are a "terrorist!" Do you hear that Habila? This is your responsibility as "deputy head" of the "national security council," whose real head is Keith Dayton.

While US-led 'surge' keeps lid on capital, thousands of Shia militia are reported in Iran preparing for all-out confrontation

The Independent

"The modest initial gains made by the US-led security "surge" in Baghdad face a devastating new threat as thousands of Iraqi Shias are reported to be receiving military training in Iran.....

There are also indications that violence has been displaced outside Baghdad, with the overall death rate among civilians remaining steady, despite a fall in the capital. The effect has been the opposite for American troops: while losses have stayed roughly the same across the country, the rate of American deaths in Baghdad during the first seven weeks of the "surge" nearly doubled from the previous period......

Abu Rafed, 32, fought for the Mahdi Army in the battles for Najaf during the summer of 2004, when hundreds of militants were killed by superior US forces. He said the fierce combat had made it obvious a new approach was needed if outgunned guerrillas were to inflict defeats on the Americans.

"This is a new plan now for the Mahdi Army, it is part of a new strategy," he said. "We know we are against a strong enemy and we must learn proper methods and techniques."

Both he and another militant, 39-year-old Abu Amer, who spoke to The Independent on Sunday through an Iraqi intermediary, asking for their full names to be withheld, said they had undergone training at a base in Jalil Azad, near Tehran. Though extremely secretive about their activities there, they said they used live ammunition on firing ranges and learned house-to-house fighting in a replica of a typical city street. There was also classroom-based tuition.

Abu Rafed estimated a total of almost 4,000 Iraqi Shias, including "many important Mahdi Army leaders", had received training there last month alone, living at the camp for weeks at a time. He said the number of Iraqi Shias arriving there had increased significantly since the start of the "surge" in February.

Abu Amer said: "The training was done by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I saw Iraqi fighters from Missan, Basra, Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah [areas of southern Iraq]. They were mainly Mahdi Army, but not all of them." More Iraqi Shias had sought military instruction, he added, after the 2006 bombing of the Samarra shrine, the event widely blamed for triggering widespread sectarian war between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias.

Although the vast majority of American casualties have been inflicted by Sunni insurgents, the US military views the Mahdi Army as the most dangerous faction in Iraq's sectarian war. It has frequently battled against British and US forces in Iraq, most recently in Diwaniyah, and has also been blamed for carrying out death squad killings of Sunnis and political assassinations. In recent months hundreds of its members have been arrested.These moves have prompted many Sadrists to believe they are on the brink of an all-out confrontation with the US Army......."

Relativism has made liberal openness appear weak, empty and repugnant compared with the clarity of dogma

Julian Baggini
Saturday April 14, 2007
The Guardian

"I don't usually consider either the Ministry of Defence or the Vatican to be prescient founts of wisdom. But when two such different oracles issue remarkably similar warnings, you have to take notice. Earlier this week it was revealed in this newspaper how the MoD believes that "the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values" was causing more and more people to seek "more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". Flash back to 2004 and you find Pope John Paul II encouraging the then Cardinal Ratzinger to challenge a world "marked by both a widespread relativism and the tendency to a facile pragmaticism" by boldly proclaiming the truth of the church. Ratzinger has been preaching about the dangers of relativism ever since.

Put the two together and you have a worrying prognosis. The clash of civilisations is happening not between Islam and the west, as we are often led to believe, but between pragmatic relativism and dogmatic certainty. On this analysis, it is easy to see liberal democracy not as the crowning achievement of civilisation but a manifestation of a laissez-faire, morally bankrupt modernity. "Relativism appears to be the philosophical foundation of democracy," said Ratzinger in 1996. "Democracy in fact is supposedly built on the basis that no one can presume to know the true way."

It is no surprise that both the MoD and the Pope believe that the beneficiaries of this polarisation will be those offering certitude, since belief in something is almost always preferable to belief in nothing. As Walter put it in the film The Big Lebowski: "Say what you like about the tenets of national socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

How did we get to this dismal Hobson's choice? The finger of blame has to be pointed largely at academics and intellectuals who have been so keen to debunk popular notions of truth that they have created a culture in which the middle ground between shoulder-shrugging relativism and dogmatic fundamentalism has been vacated......."

"Lebanese New TV revealed that at least 3 thousand members of Antoine Lahad’s Lebanese South Army, after years of unemployment in Israel, at last the US and Israel found something for them to do.

This report shoes that members of LSA are doing Israel’s dirty jobs in Iraq....."

Click Here to Watch

By Uri Avnery

"At this moment, negotiations on a prisoner exchange are in full swing.

The term 'negotiations' is really inappropriate. 'Haggling' seems more fitting. One could also use an uglier expression: 'trafficking in human beings'.

The planned deal concerns living people. They are being treated like goods, for which the officials of the two sides are bargaining, as if they were a piece of land or a load of fruit.

In their own eyes, and in the eyes of their spouses, parents and children, they are not goods. They are life itself.

Immediately after the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993, Israeli human rights group Gush Shalom publicly called on the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to free all the Palestinian prisoners.

The logic was simple: they are in reality prisoners of war. They did what they did in the service of their people, exactly like our own soldiers. The people who sent them were the chiefs of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) with whom we have just signed a far-reaching agreement. Is there any sense in signing an agreement with the commanders, while their subordinates continue to languish in our jails?

When one makes peace, prisoners of war are expected to be released. In our case, this would not only be a sign of humanity, but also of wisdom. These prisoners come from all the towns and villages. Sending them home would release an outburst of joy all over the occupied Palestinian territories. There is hardly a Palestinian family that does not have a relative in prison.

If the agreement is not to remain just a piece of paper, we said, but be imbued with content and spirit - there is no wiser act than this.

Unfortunately, Rabin did not listen to us......

Fourteen years later, nothing has changed. Prisoners have been released after completing their sentence, others have taken their place. Every night, Israeli soldiers capture a dozen or so new 'wanted' Palestinians.

At any one time, there are some 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, male and female, from minors to old people.

All our governments have treated them as goods. And goods are not given away for nothing. Goods have a price. Many times it was proposed to release some prisoners as a 'gesture' to Mahmoud Abbas, in order to strengthen him vis-à-vis Hamas. All these suggestions were rejected by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert......."

What a Joke!
Can this "National Security Council" Stop a Single IOF Soldier From Entering the West Bank?
A More Basic Question: Is it Even in its Mandate to Stop the IOF?
The Purpose is to Stop and End the Resistance!

"Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree on Sunday to form the Palestinian National Security Council.

The decree declares that Abbas heads the council and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is his deputy. The decree also states that the role of the council will be to create strategies to support Palestinian security and enforce security plans.

The Security Council will not exclusively be a security force; it also will be in charge of security negotiations and the economic security of the PA. ......

The formation of the Security Council is in accordance with the Mecca agreement signed by both Fatah and Hamas. "

While the Fat Cats are Busy with Wealth, Stocks and Sleaze.....