Palestinian Pundit

"The United States is pressing Israel to help bolster security forces in the Gaza Strip that are loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Major General Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator, recently discussed the function of the pro-Abbas Presidential Guard and National Security forces with senior Israeli officials.

The Americans believe that strengthening Abbas loyalists and deploying them in friction points along the north of the strip and Philadelphi route in Rafah will eventually improve the security situation......

A 470-strong Presidential Guard force, which had trained in Egypt, returned to Gaza last Tuesday via the Rafah crossing. Defense establishment sources said there was no need to coordinate the force's entry with Israel as the men were unarmed.

The defense establishment is undecided about helping to bolster the pro-Abbas forces and enabling Abbas to pay their wages. Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh is the main advocate for helping to strengthen the Abbas loyalists.

"The idea is to change the balance, which so far has leaned in Hamas' favor. Well-trained [pro-Abbas] forces could help tip the balance," Sneh told The Washington Post.

"We don't give them operative orders, that's Abbas' business," he added.

Defense officials rejected the IDF's evaluation that Abbas and his forces had lost the battle for control of the Gaza Strip and there was no point in helping them. The officials said the IDF was prejudiced against Fatah and its troops' capability, and that their evaluations were not based on a thorough examination of the battles.

However, there is also a controversy in the U.S. about the situation in the PA. Senior White House officials say Abbas' failure to handle the situation and his keeping away from Gaza reflect his inadequacy.

The IDF believes that Hamas has a considerable advantage over Fatah in the confrontation with Fatah in the Gaza Strip. "Hamas men are trained, equipped and more resolved than their Fatah counterparts, even if the latter outnumber them in weapons," an IDF source said.

The source said that senior defense officers identified with Fatah have taken their families out of the Gaza Strip for fear Hamas would harm them.

The head of the research division of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, on Friday told the diplomatic corps that the Hamas modus operandi in Gaza was identical to that developed by Hezbollah in South Lebanon. "Hamas is taking over Fatah and Abbas' properties and equipment that the international community is bringing into Gaza," he said in an intelligence briefing at the Dan Hotel."

Khalid Amayreh, thepeoplesvoice.org

"Harvard is a one of the most respected universities in the world. It is especially renowned for its academic excellence and sound scholarly traditions. However, Harvard’s good name is being tarnished by the presence on its campus of a certified war criminal who is believed to have been responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of innocent men, women and children in the Middle East.

The reported attendance of the former Israeli Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, on a Harvard Elite study program, does besmirch the reputation of this school which claims to be guided by ethical principles.......

However, Harvard should know better, and if ordinary Americans can be forgiven for their ignorance about Israel’s criminal behavior and racism, Harvard has no excuse.

But in case the Harvard administration is not aware of Halutz’s criminal credentials, here is a brief reminder.

As Commander of the Israeli Air Force and later Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz instructed Israeli forces, including the air force, to indiscriminately bomb Lebanese and Palestinian population centers, causing the death of thousands of civilians.

Halutz instructed Israeli pilots to bomb homes, hospitals, colleges, ambulances, airports, refineries, gas stations, schools, roads and power stations. The atrocities committed under his command were condemned worldwide as "war crimes.".....

Moreover, during the Palestinian Aqsa uprising against the Israeli occupation, Halutz adopted a policy of extra-judicial executions of Palestinian political and resistance activists. The harvest of this manifestly criminal policy was the brutal death of thousands of people, many of whom, it was later proven, were totally innocent.

Halutz also instructed Israeli soldiers to shoot Palestinian children and civilians knowingly and deliberately whenever the soldiers thought that the civilians posed the slightest threat to their safety. It is believed that as many as a thousand Palestinian children and minors were killed as a result of this haphazard policy......

And in Lebanon, Halutz committed even more horrible war crimes. Indeed, toward the end of the war of last year, he ordered his army to drop 2000,000-3000,000 million cluster bombs or bomblets all over Lebanon, with the apparent intent to kill and maim as many Lebanese children as possible.

As a result of this war crime, Lebanese children continue to die nearly on a daily basis as a result of the explosion of these ubiquitous explosives.

These are only a few examples of the war crimes committed under Halutz’ command, which makes him a war criminal, not unlike any Nazis war criminal.......

Yes, Harvard receives grants and financial contributions from pro-Israeli donors. However, Harvard should never give the impression that its ethics and moral principles are on sale for the highest bidder?"

Barghouthi urges world community to punish Israel to stop its aggression

"RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- The PA information minister, Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi, on Saturday urged the world community to impose sanctions on Israel to force it into halting its crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Barghouthi described the IOF air raids and artillery shelling against densely-populated neighborhoods in Gaza as "war crimes" and "a flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva Convention".

In a press release, the minister said that it was imperative on the international community to act so as to check the Israeli bloody attacks, which he said came as a practical response to the Arab peace initiative and in a bid to block any opportunity for peace based on justice.

Israel killed more than 50 Palestinians mostly women and children ever since the PA national unity government was formed more than two months ago while no Israeli was killed in that same period, Barghouthi pointed out.

He refuted Israel's allegation that the raids were aimed at stopping the firing of Palestinian resistance missiles, explaining that if the Israeli government really wished an end to the firing of those missiles it should have accepted the Palestinian offer of a comprehensive and reciprocal calm.

The minister said that the real aim of the current Israeli escalation is to cover up for the weakness of that government, which clearly displays the absence of any peace partner on the Israeli side.

He finally charged that the Israeli government was waging a brutal war against the Gaza Strip that did not spare civilians or infrastructure in a manner revealing the intent on destroying Palestinian life."

"ناشدت "كتائب شهداء الأقصى"، الجناح العسكري لحركة "فتح" أبناء الحركة بأن يرفضوا الانخراط في "مؤامرة تصفية المقاومة وشركاء الدم والسلاح"، قائلة: "لا للعملاء وأدعياء الانتماء لفتح في صفوفنا، ولنعلنها مجلجلة فلتعود فتح إلى أحضان أبناءها الحقيقيين والشرعيين".

وعبّرت الكتائب، في بيان صحفي لها، عن استغرابها التصعيد من قبل "فئة متمردة على ثوابت ومبادئ فتح في الوقت الذي بادر فيه شرفاء الحركة وعلى رأسهم (أحمد حلّس) إلى وضع النقاط على الحروف قبل فترة، بدعوته إلى إعادة الشرعية إلى أبناء فتح الحقيقيين بعد أن اختطفت من قبل غلمان (محمد دحلان) على مرأى ومسمع الرئيس محمود عباس الذي لم يحرك ساكناً".

وقالت: "في الوقت الذي نرى فيه قوات البغي الصهيونية تفتك بإخواننا ورفاق سلاحنا وشركائنا في خندق المقاومة في غزة الصامدة، لا يتورع شرذمة ممن ربطوا أسمائهم، زوراً وبهتاناً، بحركة فتح العظيمة عن مد يد العون لعصابات الاحتلال في حربهم المعلنة على قوى المقاومة، بل ولا يخجل الدّعي (جمال نزّال) من نفسه، ويجاهر على رؤوس الأشهاد باتهام المقاومة بأنها هي من تستدرج عصابات الاحتلال إلى غزة، وكأن المجرم (رئيس الوزراء الصهيوني إيهود) أولمرت الذي يعاني من سكرات الموت جراء تقرير (فينوغراد) بحاجة إلى مبررات لقتل أبناء شعبنا"."

A Swiss Cheese

By URI AVNERY
CounterPunch

"THE WINOGRAD committee of inquiry is not a part of the solution. It is a part of the problem.

Now, after the first excitement caused by the publication of the partial report has died down, it is possible to evaluate it. The conclusion is that it has done much more harm than good......

Strong medicine. What is the conclusion? That we must learn these lessons and improve our performance quickly, before we start the next war.

And indeed, a large part of the public drew precisely this conclusion: the three "ineptocrats" have to be removed, their place has to be filled by three leaders who are more responsible and "experienced", and we should then start Lebanon War III, so as to repair the damage caused by Lebanon War II.

The army has lost its deterrent power? We shall get it back in the next war. There was no successful ground attack? We shall do better next time. In the next war, we shall penetrate deeper.

The entire problem is technical. New leaders with military experience, orderly staff-work, meticulous preparations, an army chief from the ranks of the ground forces instead of a flying commander - and then everything will be OK.

THE MOST important part of the report is the one that is not there. The report is full of holes, like the proverbial Swiss cheese.

There is no mention of the fact that this was from the start a superfluous, senseless and hopeless war......

A CONSPICUOUS hole in the report concerns the international background of the war.

The part played by the United States was obvious from the first moment. Olmert would not have decided to start the war without obtaining explicit American permission. If the US had forbidden it, Olmert would not have dreamt of starting it.

George Bush had an interest in this war. He was (and is) stuck in the Iraqi morass. He is trying to put the blame on Syria. Therefore he wanted to strike a blow against Damascus. He also wanted to break the Lebanese opposition, in order to help America's proxy in Beirut. He was sure that it would be a cakewalk for the Israeli army.

When the expected victory was late in coming, American diplomacy did everything possible to prevent a cease-fire, so as to "give time" to the Israeli army to win. That was done almost openly.

How much did the Americans dictate to Olmert the decision to start the war, to bomb Lebanon (but not the infrastructure of the Siniora government), to prolong the war and to start a ground offensive at the last moment? We don't know. Perhaps the committee dealt with this in the secret part of the report. But without this information it is impossible to understand what happened, and therefore the report is to a large extent worthless for understanding the war......"

Interview, Crossing the Line, 19 May 2007

"This week on Crossing The Line, the ongoing debate of two states vs. one state in Israel/Palestine is nothing new. However, the debate looms larger when we talk about the issue solely in the peace movement. Host Chris Brown presents part one of a two-part conversation with noted Israeli historian Ilan Pappe."

Click Here to Listen to Part 1

Audio: Interview with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe (Pt 2)

Click Here to Listen to Part 2

An Important Piece

"DEBKAfile’s military sources report Israel is already giving Fatah arms, has been for the last six months and has sent ammo this week to keep Mahmoud Abbas’ met supplied for the escalating Palestinian factional violence. The hardware goes to the Fatah-Al Aqsa Brigades which are fighting the Hamas Executive Force, but Israel is also aware that the Brigades are firing missiles against Israeli villages, though not Sderot.

A member of the Israeli cabinet said: “Time is of the essence… when it comes to Hamas influence in the Gaza Strip – to sit and do nothing… is something we cannot afford.”

According to our military sources, Israeli military aid to Mahmoud Abbas does not end there. Even more important are Israeli Air Force raids against Hamas troops massed to attack Abu Mazen’s men. The objective of one such strike Thursday, May 17, was to thwart a Hamas assault on the Palestinian Presidential Guard base at the Karni goods crossing into Israel; another, Friday night, May 18, bombed a girls’ school in Gaza City occupied by Hamas troops. DEBKAfile’s sources report that, to escape Israeli attacks, Hamas has emptied its bases across the Gaza Strip and moved fighting contingents into mosques and schools shut down by the ubiquitous violence.

Gaza streets are deserted because, in the last day or two, Hamas and Fatah have moved their war to the rooftops. They are fighting for control of Gaza’s highest rooftops for command of the surrounding districts. The Israeli military has not been directed to strike these vulnerable Hamas units. Israel’s military aid to Abu Mazen is measured at this point.

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas called the UN Secretary, Condoleezza Rice and the German foreign minister Friday. Palestinian sources report he asked them to stop Israeli air raids over Gaza. DEBKAfile discloses that, on the contrary, he asked for the Israeli attacks on Hamas to be redoubled."

My Dad used to call people like Blair a 'twerp'. But I fear he is a vicious little man

By Robert Fisk

"By great good fortune, I studied linguistics at Lancaster University. Indeed, I read the books of Noam Chomsky, many years before he became a good friend of mine; to be honest, when I read his work, I thought Chomsky was dead. What a pleasure, therefore, to discover that he shared my world - and my views on Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara.

But I have to admit a moment of regret this weekend. Lord Blair is going from us. His self-serving memoirs will, of course, remind us of his God-like view of himself (and, heaven spare me, we share the same publishers) but I doubt if Chomsky's "foregrounded elements" will save him. A "foregrounded element" was something unusual, a phrase placed in such a way that it warned us of a lie to come.....

And now I have before me Blair's repulsive "goodbye" speech to the British people, uttered at Sedgefield. Putting the country first didn't mean "doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom" (Chomsky foregrounded element: conventional) or the "prevailing consensus: (Chomsky foregrounded element: prevailing). It meant "what you genuinely believe to be right" (Chomsky foregrounded element: genuinely). Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara wanted to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Britain's oldest ally, which he assumed to be the United States. (It is actually Portugal, but no matter.) "I did so out of belief," he told us. Foregrounded element: belief.

Am I alone in being repulsed by this? "Politics may be the art of the possible (foregrounded element: may) but, at least in life, give the impossible a go." What does this mean? Is Blair adopting sainthood as a means to an end? "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right." Excuse me? Is that Blair's message to the families of all those dead soldiers - and to the families of all those thousands of dead Iraqis? It has been an "honour" to "serve" Britain, this man tells us. What gall......

My Dad used to call people like Blair a "twerp" which, I think, meant a pregnant earwig. But Blair is not a twerp. I very much fear he is a vicious little man. And I can only recall Cromwell's statement to the Rump Parliament in 1653, repeated - with such wisdom - by Leo Amery to Chamberlain in 1940: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go." "

Israel's former military chief is taking a course at Harvard, where students are pursuing him for war crimes.

By Laila El-Haddad
The Guardian

".....After resigning his post in January, he took some time off to better himself and Halutz has been attending an elite two-month advanced management programme at the Harvard Business School (HBS) in the United States. Ironic though it may be, his training has been sponsored by the Israeli army, according to a press statement issued by HBS.

But a group of Harvard University students is trying to make sure his crimes are not forgotten, while also castigating Harvard for admitting him - and others accused of human rights abuses and war crimes - in the first place.

The Alliance for Justice in the Middle East has plastered the campus of Harvard University and its business school with mock "Wanted" posters.

The group launched their week-long mock dragnet last Tuesday to expose what they say is Harvard University's "pattern of admitting and hiring individuals with a credible and public record of war crimes and human rights abuses". In addition to the "Wanted" posters, they are employing missing person milk cartons, helium balloons, and the Internet to make their case.

The posters say Halutz is "wanted for war crimes" for ordering the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon last summer, killing over 1,000 civilians. The jets he commanded bombed houses and hospitals, ambulances and airports, refineries and roads. The atrocities committed under his command were condemned worldwide as war crimes. Now he's hiding out and padding his resumé in an executive education programme at Harvard Business School," it reads.

It says he is still "at large" and then asks people to contact the International Criminal Court if they spot him.

Human rights organisations around the world, including in Israel, have also accused Halutz of war crimes for the one-tonne bomb he ordered dropped in a heavily populated civilian area in Gaza in 2002.

Despite my prompting, university officials declined to comment, but did issue a press statement saying that the purpose of the programme was "to bring diverse groups of senior executives together to achieve a broader perspective on global strategic issues". It further states that the school "relies on the information provided by and the judgment of" the sponsoring organisations. In this case, the Israeli military. Yes, that's right, the Israeli military......"

Saturday May 19, 2007
The Guardian

"......But examine the plan and it begins to unravel, as all the other security plans have. Sunni insurgents are showing a remarkable ability to regroup. Forced out of Baghdad temporarily, 50 of them attacked a US base in Baquba yesterday. There is a major manhunt going on for three US soldiers seized in an ambush a week ago. Anyone who argues that the surge is quelling the insurgency, rather than merely displacing it, will have difficulty sustaining the thesis. Power has become so dispersed that it makes little sense talking about one insurgency, or indeed one civil war. As Gareth Stansfield argues in a Chatham House paper this week, there are Shias fighting against Sunnis for control of Baghdad; there are Kurds struggling against Arabs in Kirkuk and possibly also Mosul; there are Sunnis fighting US soldiers in the centre and the north; there are Sadrist Shias fighting the US and British in the south; Sunni tribal forces are fighting Sunni Islamists of al-Qaida; Shia militia groups are fighting each other in the south, as we report today; and there is also rampant criminality everywhere.

There is no shortage of deeply gloomy scenarios for a country that is in the process of disintegrating. If serious fighting breaks out this year between the Kurds and Arabs in Kirkuk, the world will see just how much further Iraq can fall. Few doubt that there will be a pull-out of coalition forces. The only debate is how quickly and under what conditions. Some insiders argue that it is better to get the pain over with now, and hand over to the Iraqi army and police force immediately, others that a central government with an army and police force is a myth on which it is dangerous to rely, and that local forces should be put in charge of local law enforcement. Whoever is right, it is surely time that our leaders started recognising the reality of life in Iraq and stopped indulging in daydreams."

Britain has failed to stop southern Iraq falling into grip of militias

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Basra
Saturday May 19, 2007
The Guardian

"......"If the Prophet Muhammad would come to Basra today he would be killed because he doesn't have a militia," a law professor told me. "There is no state of law, the only law is the militia law."......

"When these religious parties say Basra is calm, that's because they control the city, and they are looting it," he said. "It's calm not because it's under the control of the police, but because all the militias have interests and they want to maintain the status quo. The moment their interests are under threat the whole city can burn."

Like many I spoke to, he said the appearance of a functioning state was largely an illusion: "The security forces are made of militiamen. In any confrontation between political parties, the police force will splinter according to party line and fight each other."......"

Blair: We Will Support Iraq to Death!

By Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

"The Bush Administration has now embarked on its fourth "regime change" operation in its global "Terror War." Following the more direct overthrows in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aggression by paid-for proxies in Somalia, we now have the civil war in Palestine, with U.S. arms and money backing the armed overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government. As in Somalia, where the American-trained army of the Ethiopian dictatorship joined up with Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, the latest regime change is being carried out by a combination of foreign and native proxies: the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

The civil war in Palestine is of course a long-held dream of the American and Israeli Right. Israel first secretly supported the sectarian Hamas in order to undermine the secular nationalists of Arafat's PLO; now they openly take sides with Arafat's successors in the Palestinian Authority against Hamas, which -- as always happens -- escaped the control of the puppet-masters who sought to exploit the group for their own ends. But the long-term aim has been achieved: a violently divided Palestinian society, broken down, killing each other off, leaving Israel free to continue its colonization of Palestinian land. As others have pointed out, it's no wonder that the United States so staunchly supports this policy: after all, it's what we did to the Native Americans.

The latter is actually an important point, if mostly overlooked. Critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians -- especially those well-disposed toward Israel, who write more in sorrow than in anger -- often hold out the idea that Israel will eventually come to its senses, that its leaders will finally have to acknowledge that they can't simply brutalize their way to victory and vanquish the Palestinian cause by force, take over all the land they want and build their own society on these ill-gotten gains. But of course history is filled with examples of this very process; in the grand sweep of time, it has actually succeeded more often than not......

There is at present no superior force, no institutional or legal check (from a rightwing judiciary and a spineless Congress) or sufficient popular opposition to bring the moral obscenity of the Terror War to a halt, and redirect America's energies toward more worthy -- and more security-conducive -- ends. And so the "regime change" operations will go on, spreading death, chaos and immense suffering in its wake, and seeding future conflicts, future blowback, endless horrors to come.

As for the Palestinian "regime change," the Bush faction is scarcely bothering to hide its role in bringing about the armed conflict. Jonathan Schwarz is on the case here, with this sharp post, marked as usual with his dark wit......"

"BAGHDAD --The leader of Iraq's largest Shiite political party has left for the United States for medical checkups, an official at his office said Friday.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim flew to the United States on Wednesday, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. He released no other details.

Al-Hakim, re-elected last week as leader of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, is not known to be suffering any health problems, but he is a heavy smoker. He addressed a news conference May 12 at the end of a two-day conference of his party, founded in neighboring Iran in the early 1980s.

Al-Hakim, who has led his party since 2003, is believed to be in his late 50s or early 60s.

He had a White House meeting with President Bush in December."

"Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.

At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews.

The numbers, which have not been previously reported, disclose the extent to which contractors — Americans, Iraqis and workers from more than three dozen other countries — are largely hidden casualties of the war, and now are facing increased risks alongside American soldiers and marines as President Bush’s plan to increase troop levels in Baghdad takes hold......."

By Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry
Asia Times

October 12-14, 2006






Part 1: Winning the Intelligence War

Part 2: Winning the Ground War

Part 3: The Political War

***

Because winning is no accident!

"GAZA, (PIC)-- The fighting in Gaza between Hamas and rogue elements in Fatah was planned beforehand under US supervision and is being executed by mercenaries of the occupation, said the AMB, the armed wing of Fatah.

The Armed Struggle and Right of Return wing in the AMB said in a statement that the aim of the Israeli occupation government is "for us to forget our main aim and get busy with fighting one another through plans supervised by Condoleezza Rice and General Dayton through the Mossad and Shabak and their cohorts who follow blindly."

The group further said that resistance is the only way for unity and liberation stressing that it will fight for homeland, holy places and the right of return and reject those who serve the interests of the US and Israel as people who have no place amongst the Palestinian people.

The group also reminded the people that Israel does not distinguish between the various armed wings and that discord creates a rich environment for the fifth column to mobilize its forces.

The statement further said that the aim of all this chaos is to narrow the horizons of the Palestinian people and force them to submit to the Zionist plans as they clear the way for those [Palestinians] who are ready to compromise."

Dear Hamas,

Here is your assignment for today: Write the following statement 100 times and repeat every morning.


JIHAD DOES NOT MEAN NOT USING YOUR BRAIN.....

JIHAD DOES NOT MEAN NOT USING YOUR BRAIN.....

JIHAD DOES NOT MEAN NOT USING YOUR BRAIN.....

............

Will the Palestinians Ever Learn?? We Never Saw Hizbullah Fighters Riding Cars and Being Repeatedly Killed Like This! Why Can't the Palestinians Think??
Israeli aircraft fire missiles at car traveling in northern Gaza City, killing 2 members of Hamas and injuring 7 others, eyewitnesses say

A Very Serious and Ominous Development

"Bethlehem - Ma'an - King Abdullah II of Jordan has drawn up a new initiative to solve the Palestinian question based on the historic confederation of Jordan and Palestine.

The Israeli daily Maariv claimed on Friday that King Abdullah's initiative calls for the establishment of a united Hashemite-Palestinian kingdom with the king presiding over the two states.

According to the king's envoys, such as Abdul Salam Al-Majali and others, who were sent to Israel to speak on behalf of King Abdullah II last week, the Palestinian-Jordanian United Kingdom would comprise of two independent sovereign states. Under the king would be a prime minister, a chair of the Palestinian state and another of the Jordanian state.

Maariv did not exclude the possibility that the initiative could be a test aimed at reviving the paralyzed peace process and at diverting the concern in Jordan over a possible US withdrawal from Iraq soon. The newspaper said it expects the Jordanian king to find himself stuck between Islamic chaos in Iraq, Palestinian crowds in Jordan and internal chaos in the Palestinian territories.

Maariv also quoted the Jordanian envoys to Israel as saying to the Israeli officials: "You claim that there is nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side, and there is nothing tangible to discuss. Why don't you talk with us, the Jordanians, with participation of representatives of the Palestinian president? Let us talk about a confederation under the king of Jordan."

The Israeli newspaper pointed out that several obstacles face the Jordanian initiative, such as the stipulation that it should be implemented after securing complete Israeli approval of the Arab peace initiative, in addition to Israeli suspicions regarding Jordan's intentions. "

***

We reported on this story last week, and despite Jordanian denials, the story is correct. It is another part of the U.S. plan to keep the Palestinians under heel and under custody of its most reliable stooge in the area, the Clown King. This is in preparation to force a "settlement" on the Palestinians drafted in Tel Aviv. It is back to the good old days, before the PLO, when Arab puppets always spoke for the Palestinians who were kept in chains and out of sight. It is back to the future!

This will also facilitate the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israel by "transferring" them across the Jordan River. It is obviously in conformity with longstanding Israeli policy that the Palestinian state is in Jordan.

This is extremely serious and all Palestinians have to rise up against it before it is too late.

Al-Manar

" 18/05/2007 نقل تلفزيون العدو ان رئيس وزراء الاسرائيلي ايهود اولمرت، ابلغ الرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس ان ضبط حكومته للنفس وصل الى نهايته، وانها ستعمل الان بقسوة ضد حماس وان العمليات العسكرية الاسرائيلية ضد الفلسطينيين تحظى بغطاء اميركي. كما انها تقوم باتصالات خارجية للايضاح بان الهدف من ذلك توفير قدرتها على المناورة، وايصال رسالة للعالم ان اسرائيل لم تدخل حتى الآن بعملية عسكرية واسعة، الا انها مستعدة لذلك، وهو خيار موجود لايجاد ضغط دبلوماسي على حركة حماس يضاف للضغط العسكري.

أما رئيس لجنة الخارجية والامن تساحي هنغبي، فقد دعا الى المس بالقادة السياسيين لحماس في الحكومة الفلسطينية، فيما طالب زعيم الليكود بنيامين نتنياهو بفرض حصار مشدد على قطاع غزة وقطع بعض القطاعات الحيوية عن الفلسطينيين.

وقال بنيامين نتنياهو، زعيم حزب الليكود " لو كنت رئيسا للوزراء لبدأت بالرد في وقت ابكر فليس مقبولا القول ليس لدينا ما نفعله لمواجهة الارهاب فيمكننا ان نستخدم الضغط من خلال فرض حصار على غزة وايقاف تقديم الخدمات، والقيام بعمليات برية ضد المناطق التي تطلق منها الصواريخ".

وفيما نقلت صحيفة يديعوت احرونوت عن مصدر امني كبير قوله ان العمليات العسكرية ستتواصل الى ان يقول الفلسطينيون كفى، تحول هرب مستوطني سديروت بسبب استمرار تساقط الصواريخ الى مشكلة حقيقة امام الحكومة الاسرائيلية، وقدر عدد الهاربين بحوالي ثلاثة الاف مستوطن قصدوا مناطق اكثر امناً.
الحكومة الاسرائيلية التي لم تؤمن الملاجيء لهؤلاء، ولم تستطع وقف الصواريخ اصابها الحرج الشديد امام غضب واحباط المستوطنيين، وامام مبادرة الملياردر الاسرائيلي اركادي غايدمن الذي اخذ على عاتقه تأمين الباصات واماكن السكن للهاربين، كاشفاً بذلك عن ارتباك الحكومة.

وعلق على ذلك المحلل السياسي تشيكو مناشية بالقول الحكومة مربكة فيما يتعلق باجلاء سكان سديروت، وقد تكلم اعضاؤها بمواقف مختلفة، ولدى مكتب رئيس الحكومة صعوبة جوهرية فيما يتعلق بالاعتراف بان الدولة تجلي السكان وقد اعطى بريتس امرا واضحا باجلاء من يريد المغادرة". بدوره قال ايلي موئيل، رئيس بلدية سديروت" اعتقد ان سديروت تعيش في حالة ذعر وخروج بعض السكان هو امر طبيعي وعلينا ان نتفهم موقفهم فهم يعانون وما حصل في الايام الاخيرة اثار رعبهم". صحيفة يديعوت احرونوت كشفت ان الصواريخ تساقطت الخميس على سديروت بعد دقائق قليلة من مغادرة اولمرت للمستوطنة حيث التقى بيريتس فيها ."

"Fully 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll.

The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view.

Some 65 percent believe that the United States is a loyal ally of Israel, with only 11 percent saying the opposite. A slightly higher proportion, 73 percent, described U.S. President George W. Bush as friendly. Forty-eight percent attributed U.S. support for Israel to strategic considerations, while 30 percent credited American Jewry and 17 percent cited shared values and a shared democratic tradition.

Regarding America's importance to Israel, there was near consensus: 91 percent said that close relations with the U.S. are vital to Israel's security......"

By Amira Hass

".......And why should Israel take into consideration the warnings of the World Bank when they have no teeth? It is not enough to mention the apartheid roads in connection with the expansion of the settlements, or the fact that around 50 percent of West Bank territory is not accessible to Palestinians. It is not enough to count the trucks at the Karni crossing that do not enter and exit, or to calculate the small number of days when the Rafah terminal is open. It is not enough to adorn the reports with scholarly charts presenting the Palestinian territories as a perpetual disaster area.

The United States and Europe knew very well how to punish the Palestinians when democratic, free elections gave rise to a Hamas government: with a political boycott and a freeze on financial aid earmarked for development and for encouraging independent production and rebuilding.......

The countries issuing the warnings continue to purchase Israeli manufactured arms and other security-related products. They host military officers who are directly responsible for the killing of hundreds of Palestinian citizens and fervently implement the siege policy. They invite Israeli ministers who are responsible for the economic and social de-development of a whole people. Their representatives also meet with ministers whose remarks and actions negate the rights of the Palestinian people with no less determination than those of Hamas ministers, who refuse to declare their recognition of Israel's right to exist. The Western countries chose to punish the occupied with very concrete means - but not the occupier, which it sees as part of their Enlightened Civilization. They thus signal to Israel that it may adhere to the same policies whose impact the reports are warning against. "

Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to Counter Hamas

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

"JERUSALEM, May 17 -- Israel this week allowed the Palestinian party Fatah to bring into the Gaza Strip as many as 500 fresh troops trained under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that won Palestinian parliamentary elections last year. Fighting between Hamas and Fatah has left about 45 Palestinians dead since Sunday. The forces belong to units loyal to the elected Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate Fatah leader whom the Bush administration and Israel have sought to strengthen militarily and politically. A spokeswoman for the European Union Border Assistance Mission at Rafah, where the fighters crossed into Gaza from Egypt, said their entry Tuesday was approved by Israel.

The troops' deployment illustrates the increasingly partisan role that Israel and the Bush administration are taking in the volatile Palestinian political situation. The effort to fortify the armed opposition to Hamas, which the United States and Israel categorize as a terrorist organization, follows attempts to isolate the radical Islamic movement internationally and cut off its sources of financial aid.......

The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000 troops under Abbas's direct control, but both Israel and the United States, each deeply unpopular among Arabs in the region, have been trying to avoid the perception of taking sides in a conflict that this week in Gaza has resembled a nascent civil war. Many within Fatah are avowed opponents of Israel, and any alliance with the Jewish state against the militant movement could damage Fatah's standing among Palestinians......

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subject, said the decision to allow Fatah troops into Gaza this week was based on trying to help Abbas take control of northern Gaza. That area is the prime launching ground for the erratic if lethal rockets known as Qassams.

"If you look at exit scenarios for what's going on there now, you could have a force loyal to Abbas in northern Gaza that could be highly useful to Israel," one Israeli official said. "But within the larger crisis you have to be careful. We don't want to be a part of this conflict, so this is a balancing act."......

The troops were trained by Egyptian authorities under a program coordinated by Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, a special U.S. envoy to the region who has been working to improve security in Gaza and the West Bank in order to foster Israeli-Palestinian economic alliances in the short term and peace prospects over time......Although it is under Abbas's authority, the Presidential Guard is run by Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah lawmaker who has worked closely with several U.S. administrations. Abbas named Dahlan his national security adviser after Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to establish a power-sharing government......

Israeli officials said the forces, whom one Israeli Defense Ministry official called "Dayton's guys," were trained in Egypt and numbered between 400 and 500 men....."

By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Pax Americana
By Imad Hajjaj

".......A senior Israeli officer commented Thursday: “The fire burning in Sderot and Gaza could spread suddenly to Lebanon or Syria.”.....

In sum, the two heads of Hamas’ military wing are determined to topple by force of arms and hundreds of Qassam missiles the Palestinian strategies pursued by the US, Europe, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East Quartet and Israel.....

If Abbas’ forces, in which the US has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and high hopes for a Palestinian future, were to go into battle, the IDF could strike Hamas from the rear to halt the missile offensive on its own account, without becoming a party to the factional conflict. But as long as Abu Mazen keeps his men on the sidelines, Israeli leaders are stuck with their second decision in 11 months about whether or not to go to war against an aggressor.

In the hope of luring Abbas’ men into battle against Hamas, the Israeli Air Force was ordered early Friday, May 18, to help the Palestinian Presidential Guard’s 4th Battalion guarding the Karni goods crossing from Israel by striking a Hamas unit poised to seize the border facility. This was the first time Israel stepped into the Hamas-Fatah conflict. If it fails to draw Abbas’ men into the fray, Israel could risk being forced to challenge the Hamas missile masterminds alone - and be unwillingly drawn into the factional dispute on Abu Mazen’s behalf.

That is not the only dilemma facing Olmert.

If he holds the army back from a direct confrontation with Hamas, the missile offensive will develop into a war of attrition on Israel’s southwestern border. Hamas has threatened to expand its offensive to towns which are larger and more distant from Gaza’s borders than Sderot. If, on the other hand, Israel goes ahead and clobbers Hamas, it faces the multiple threats of renewed suicidal terror in its main cities and of Hizballah and Syria joining in to support Hamas.

It looks therefore as though the widely predicted Summer 2007War is already upon Israel - and it won’t be an easy one."

By Tony Sayegh

It has become fashionable for friends and foes of the Palestinians to decry what they refer to as the inter-Palestinian fighting. Some have gone as far as calling it a civil war. Hamas and Fatah are equally blamed in what passes as astute observation and wisdom in various commentaries.

In this blessed age of the “new Middle East” brought to us courtesy of the American benevolence and zeal for democracy, we have been manipulated by the spin machines to believe that civil wars are breaking out spontaneously in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and now Palestine. What more proof do we need that we are primitive, uncivilized savages who need the big stick of the kind, civilized Western occupiers to keep us from each other’s throat? Therefore the American occupation of Iraq can’t end, for fear of a “full blown civil war.” Now some Israelis are saying only re-occupying Gaza would restore “peace.”

Focusing on the Palestinian arena, and notwithstanding my strong criticisms of Hamas, I have to state unequivocally that I can’t consider both Hamas and Fatah as equally culpable. Further, it should be stated that what is taking place is not only not a civil war, but also not a Palestinian fight between Fatah and Hamas. Rather, it is obvious by now that a faction within Fatah as represented by the notorious Dahlan and with the acquiescence of the stooge Abbas is leading a Contra-style effort to impose a reign of terror and a police “state” on the Palestinians in order to force a “settlement” favorable to Israel on them and to physically snuff out any opposition.

It is no coincidence that the brain behind this plan is none other than Elliott Abrams with the Central American experience of toppling governments, arming and financing of death squads and Contra forces, and campaigns of assassinations and terror. Abrams has put together a similar plan for the Palestinians and the U.S. Congress has appropriated the funds for this plan. Unlike the Iran-Contra deal, this is not secret and we have read its details in the papers. We know that at least $84 millions have been allocated by the Congress. We also know that the U.S. is openly training, with the assistance of its two client regimes in Jordan and Egypt, the Palestinian Contras. We even know where they are being trained!

The real surprise is that the various Palestinian groups were not up in arms after finding out these details. The Palestinian street was also complacent about all of this as if this plan does not concern it. Of course the blockade and the empty stomachs were intended to minimize opposition to the plan. Still not many Palestinian voices, even in the Diaspora, were raised. A certain fog seemed to surround what is being planned, even though none of it was secret. It was as if the Palestinians did not want to face up to the fact that among them, as with any other people, there are those who would work against the interests of their people and actually work for U.S. and Israeli interests.

What is happening now is that the order has been given by Usrael for this Palestinian Contra faction to forcefully implement the plan. We read in Haaretz, for example, about Condoleezza’s plan with precise dates for implementation, which Abbas accepted within 24 hours. We also know that a part of the plan calls for Dahlan to submit and implement a plan on how to disarm the resistance and stop the launching of rockets from Gaza. The deadline for the implementation of this “security” plan is June 21; only a month away. Is it not clear now why the so-called “Presidential Guard” has been deployed in the north and the east of Gaza? Is it not clear now why about 500 of the Palestinian Badr Brigade, based and trained in Jordan were allowed through the Rafah crossing (which is closed for Palestinian civilians most of the time) from Egypt? Is it not clear why large arms shipments were sent through Jordan and Egypt to the Palestinian Contras?

With all of my criticisms of Hamas, it is the only major force standing up to the Contras and their dark plans. That much we have to recognize. If the Contras succeed in crushing Hamas there will be no resistance left and Palestinian rights will be liquidated. This is what all the client Arab regimes are waiting for to normalize relations with Israel over the wreckage of the Palestinians using the “peace plan” fig leaf.

Realizing all of these very ominous dimensions of what has been planned and is being executed, makes it unconscionable for any Palestinian to just blame both parties equally and to portray what is happening as a power struggle. The picture is clear and all Palestinians need to expose and to stand up to the Contras in their middle.

By Mike Luckovich

Contributed by Datta

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"We turn now to Gaza where at least twenty Palestinians were killed Wednesday in fierce internal fighting between the two main factions Hamas and Fatah. As many as 45 people have died with more than 100 wounded in four days of violence......

AMY GOODMAN: Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian journalist and mother living in Gaza. She writes for a number of publications, including aljzeera.net and The Guardian of London. She maintains a blog called "Raising Youssef: A Diary of a Mother Under Occupation." She joins us now from Gaza.....

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Right. Of course, I mean, you know, people here are very perturbed and upset at what’s happening locally and place a lot of blame on the organizations themselves or the members or whoever is doing the shooting, but at the same time look at it within the larger context of the continuing Israeli occupation, the continuing Israeli siege of Gaza and, of course, the continuing global boycott of the Palestinian government and, even now, the Palestinian unity government, and taking a step further and seeing that there’s something far more sinister behind it all, particularly the US agenda to see the downfall of the unity government through arming, of course, and training Mohammad Dahlan, the Fatah strongman in Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces......

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Yeah, I mean, it’s -- again, it is no hidden agenda. It’s not any kind of conspiracy. It’s something that’s been very open and reported openly in the press, but again, the media has chosen not to necessarily concentrate on this particular aspect.

Over the past, I think it might have been, two years or so, especially, particularly in the period right before the elections, the US began funding Mohammad Dahlan, specifically, personally, in hopes to stave off a Hamas election victory, and then, following the election victory, Hamas’s election, continued to fund both Mohammad Dahlan and Mahmoud Abbas, the security forces, and training and arming them, as well. And the sum has reached something to the effect of $84 million.

And just a day ago, when the latest clashes began, in fact, Israel authorized the opening of Rafah crossing, which is closed -- the only civilian passage in and out of Gaza, and it’s closed at least 50% of the time, according to the UN. But they authorized that to be open specifically to allow the entry of at least 450 members of the Badr Brigades, which is the elite Fatah brigades that were trained in Jordan with US funding. So again, it’s very clear and out in the open. And just about a week or two ago, the plan was elaborated on in a Jordanian newspaper, before being whisked off the presses -- again, the latest plan to arm and fund and try to overthrow or see the downfall, at least, of the unity government......"

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

كشفت مصادر فلسطينية مطلعة أن قوات الأمن الوطني، التابعة لرئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس، نشرت عدداً من أفرادها في شمال قطاع غزة، بالقرب من الحدود الفاصلة بين القطاع والأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة سنة 1948، وذلك لمنع مجاهدي كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام ومجاهدي المقاومة من إطلاق الصواريخ باتجاه المستعمرات الصهيونية.

بدوره؛ أكد "أبو عبيدة"، الناطق الإعلامي باسم "كتائب القسام" بأن معلومات مؤكدة وردت لدى الكتائب عن وجود عدد من الملثمين يتواجدون في منطقة الجمارك داخل ثكنة عسكرية، مشيراً إلى أنهم يتواجدون في منطقة محظورة أمنياً وهي تعد منطقة خطيرة أمنياً ولا تسمح قوات الاحتلال لأحد بدخولها.

واعتبر الناطق، في تصريح صحفي له، وجود أفراد الأمن في تلك المنطقة بأنه "ينذر بأمر خطير وهو ملاحقة المقاومة الفلسطينية أو رصد تحركات المقاومة للاحتلال"، وقال: "نحن لا نسمي هؤلاء أمن وطني، هؤلاء قوات لحد الفلسطينية (نسبة إلى قوات لحد اللبنانية العميلة للاحتلال الصهيوني) تتعامل مع الاحتلال، ونحن سنتعامل معها كما نتعامل مع الاحتلال".

وحذر "أبو عبيدة" هؤلاء من التعاون مع الاحتلال، خاصة وأن لدى الكتائب معلومات مؤكدة بأن بعض هؤلاء العاملين على الساحة الفلسطينية يقومون برصد تحركات المجاهدين وقيادات في كتائب القسام، "ومن يقوم برصد تحركات قيادات القسام يعني أنه يقوم برصدها للاحتلال الصهيوني". "

Why is the Coward Hiding in the Green Zone in Ramallah, Instead of Being in Gaza?

Rebirthing the Neocons

By BADRUDDIN KHAN
CounterPunch

"Bernard Lewis' op-ed piece in the May 16, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal deserves swift rebuttal. This is the same man who advised President Bush prior to the Iraq war that the only language Arabs understood was the language of force. While Presidents may self-select advisors who tell them what they want to hear, these advisors bear as much responsibility, specially when they pose as "experts".

Lewis is an octogenarian Zionist, an "expert" author of numerous books purporting to explain Islam and Arabs. His political agenda is thinly veiled, and along with his neoconservative cohorts he has been one of the lead propagandists advocating military action in the middle-east. A card-carrying member of the Israel Lobby, his situational analysis consistently deflects attention from Israel's primacy in US policymaking where the Mideast is concerned. The Lobby, of course, cannot afford to have an open discussion around the difference in what is good for the US, versus what is good for Israel.

Lewis' op-ed article is a call to arms against Islam. Like the skilful propagandist that he is, he weaves his story using metaphors carefully planted in the American psyche since 9/11, to painstakingly rekindle the fire of fear......

Rather than educate an American audience about distinctions within the Muslim world, Lewis is a Svengali who seems intent on misleading American policy. He has succeeded in mesmerizing the born-again Christian policymakers in today's Washington with simple tales of friend and foe. In this particular article, he talks about how the collapse of the Soviet system was seen by Bin Laden as a "Muslim victory". Really? Given that Bin Laden represents such a tiny sliver of all Muslims, how can his perception be any more real than that of Don Quixote de la Mancha? By elevating Bin Laden, Lewis seeks to strike fear in Americans, and continue the push to turn the so-called "war on terror" into a "war on Islam"because, as he would spin it, they declared war first!

The translucent elephant in the room that appears to energize Lewis and the rest of the neoconservatives is, of course, Israel and its survival as a Jewish-only statedemocracy for Jews, apartheid for the rest. The real question he should address is, how much damage are he and his cohorts willing to inflict on the US, to support Israel's unsupportable policies?"

The question is:

Do you have confidence in the ceasefires between Fatah and Hamas?

With about 2,000 responding so far, 87% said no.

Bill Berkowitz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 May 2007

"The right-wing U.S. Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell, who died Tuesday at the age of 73, is perhaps best known for his fundamentalist social positions and tirades against lesbians, gays and feminists, not to mention "pagans", "abortionists" and assorted other miscreants. But Falwell also had a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy over the last 30 years, and was one of the founding fathers here of so-called Christian Zionism -- the belief that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical "End Times" prophecy and thus deserving of political, financial and religious support....."

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – Chairman of the Israeli Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday called for cutting the water and electricity supplies of the Gaza Strip, and depriving it of services. He said that fundamental services, basics of human life, should be controlled by the Israeli authorities, in response to the continuation of the launching of homemade projectiles towards Israeli targets.

Netanyahu also expressed his support to a limited Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip; to a limit of around four kilometers from the northern border, aimed at stopping the launch of projectiles toward Sderot and Ashkelon cities.

During a speech at the Menachem Begin heritage center in Jerusalem, before members of the Likud bloc in the Israeli Knesset, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the party's rise to power, Netanyahu declared "the Israeli government has done nothing to stop the launching of projectiles, while former Israeli Prime minister Menachem Begin realized back then that the government's first priority must be the safety of its citizens."

Last summer, during the Israeli offensive dubbed "Operation: Summer Rain", Gaza's only remaining power station was heavily bombed. Since then, residents of the Gaza Strip have only had limited power, at very limited times. Most residents spend the evenings in total darkness, while a lucky few have a few hours of electricity per night. International organisations at the time called the bombing an unaccpetable "use of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians", completely illegal under international law and the Geneva conventions. "

Pinochet Dahlan's Force 17, attend a training session in the West Bank city of Ramallah May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK)

An injured Palestinian woman is covered in blood as she is rushed from a building after an Israeli airstrike on a nearby facility used by the Islamic group Hamas in Gaza City, Thursday, May 17, 2007. An Israeli airstrike struck a Hamas compound in central Gaza City on Thursday, killing one and wounding at least 45 people, Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammed Al-Zanon-MaanImages)

Palestinians search the rubble of a building after an Israeli airstrike on the facility used by the Islamic group Hamas in Gaza City, Thursday, May 17, 2007. An Israeli airstrike struck a Hamas compound in central Gaza City on Thursday, killing one and wounding at least 45 people, Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Palestinians rush wounded people to a hospital following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Israel bombed Hamas targets in Gaza.(AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Palestinians evacuate a wounded woman from her destroyed house after an Israeli air strike in Gaza May 17, 2007. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

A Palestinian man shouts from the rubble of a destroyed Hamas Executive Force building after an Israeli air strike in Gaza May 17, 2007. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Palestinians evacuate a wounded member of the Hamas Executive Force after an Israeli air strike on their building in Gaza May 17, 2007. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

By Ali Farzat

Political repression, social inequality and economic disaster across the Middle East are the consequences of decades of "divide and rule" imperialist meddling followed by rapacious rule by local elites. Yet the potential for unity in the Muslim world is not a chimera. Who will be the 21st century equivalent of Saladin, the greatest warrior of Islam? Such a one is needed to reunite the ummah.

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"......The new Saladin might be the son of a Palestinian refugee victim of the Nakhba ("catastrophe") 59 years ago. He might be a computer wizard too sophisticated to be tempted by al-Qaeda's Salafi-jihadism. He might be an angry young man straight out of the "sanctions generation" in Iraq - deprived of everything while he was growing up, courtesy of the "international community".

.......He won't be the pampered son of the Sunni business aristocracy in Damascus showing off his Porsche Cayenne. He won't be a billionaire international playboy posing as politician a la Saad Hariri in Beirut. He won't be a gas-dealing executive in gas nirvana Qatar.

Conditions are more than ripe for the advent of a new Saladin - after the Nakhba, the 1967 lightning Israeli victory against the Arabs, the failures of pan-Arabism, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli attack on Lebanon, the limited appeal of Salafi-jihadism, the non-stop stifling of nationalist movements by Western-backed brutal dictatorships/client monarchies......

The new Saladin knows how the US and Britain initially supported the Muslim Brotherhood - and then the Brotherhood supported the birth of Hamas. He knows how the US and Britain initially supported Iranian clerics - especially the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - against the shah. He knows how the US and Britain initially supported the Taliban. The aim was always to stifle any form of progressive, secular movement by socialists, communists or Arab nationalists.

A possible Saudi-Iran entente is still a dream. There is the parallel emergence of a coalition of top members of the "axis of fear" - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan - with Turkey and, of all players, Israel. Common objective: the containment of Iran. And not only Iran, but also Hezbollah and Hamas. King Abdullah was persuaded of this strategy by notorious Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka "Bandar Bush", former Saudi ambassador in the US for 22 years, a close friend of both Bush and Cheney, and now the head of the Saudi National Security Council.

The strategy was in fact masterminded by a pedestrian version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Cheney; Bandar; US deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams; and former US ambassador in Iraq and Afghan jack-of-all-trades Zalmay Khalilzad. What the popular masses in the Middle East think about this is of course irrelevant. In majority-Sunni Egypt, for instance, the most popular politicians are by far Hezbollah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas, and Ahmadinejad. Two Shi'ites and a Sunni amply supported by Shi'ites......

The soul of Saladin may be impatient for an heir. So are hundreds of millions in the ummah. What rough warrior, its hour come out at last, slouches toward Jerusalem, Damascus or Baghdad to be born?"

The political class and media have failed to hold the prime minister to account and made the intolerable seem invisible

Karma Nabulsi
(teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University)

Thursday May 17, 2007
The Guardian

"......In the tens of thousands of words devoted to Tony Blair's political legacy and Gordon Brown's platform for future political action, Iraq is rightly seen as the catastrophe it is. But the way it is intertwined with the key issue of peace in the Middle East - and self-determination, justice and freedom for the Palestinians - has been absent. How could such a pervasive amnesia have established itself across the liberal media? From the seamless end of an era to the claim of the fresh start of a new one, spin has reached its apogee. The policies and practices of aggression, repression and occupation have been set alongside the policies and practices of resistance to tyranny, freedom and self-determination, and given moral equivalence.

The intolerable is now invisible. An entirely new set of problems have been created that are the purlieu of the security experts and ministerial committees: the "clash of civilisations", where "terror" and "security" are cited as the most urgent priority, where political rhetoric is couched in terms of religion as opposed to the real issues driven by injustice, occupation, dispossession and inequality.

The inability of political leaders in Britain to take a sustained principled position on Palestine has been served by the mainstream media, which in the past few years have so obscured the nature of the struggle in Palestine that hardly anyone understands what the conflict is about, or what must be done to end it. Instead we have an existential war about religion and extremism, where Israel, the occupier and regional hyperpower, is cast as eternal friend, liberal, victim and hero. A recent study at Glasgow University revealed the astonishing fact that over 70% of young people surveyed did not know that East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are under military occupation by the Israeli army; 11% believe it is the Palestinians who are occupying that land.

The most elementary facts have been separated from the truth. To now propose foreign investment in Gaza as the solution to the expanding illegal settlements and land seizures by Israel, the increasing violence of a 39-year military occupation, the continued dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees living in dangerous circumstances for nearly 60 years, and even today's violence in Gaza (entirely a byproduct of these larger issues) is, quite simply, to propose the death of Palestine and its people......."

By Imad Hajjaj

The Sitting Ducks of Hamas' "Executive Force".....
For the Israelis it is Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel....
How Stupid Can You be!!!

At Times as these, I Almost Miss Habila Smiling and Waving....
R.I.P. "Unity Government"

"JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel on Monday began marking 40 years since it conquered and annexed Arab east Jerusalem but the ceremonies were boycotted by European and US diplomats.

"The last 40 years were only the beginning," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a special parliamentary session marking the anniversary according to the Hebrew calendar.

"I believe, I hope and I pray that we will continue to work together to reinforce Jerusalem in order to extend its boundaries."....."

Mubarak expresses concern over growing strength of Hamas

"Haaretz has learned that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressed great concern over the increasing strength of Hamas in talks with senior diplomatic officials on Wednesday.

He said that the Egyptian government is at a loss regarding the future of the Gaza Strip. However, he also proclaimed that Egypt is making great efforts to end the Hamas government and support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

"With Hamas no way," he reportedly said.

Mubarak painted a dark picture of the situation with Hamas and said there was no chance for peace with the organization. "Hamas will never sign a peace agreement with Israel if it stays in power," the Egyptian president said.

Mubarak also said that Egypt did not accept Hamas in power, especially in light of its growing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, which leads the opposition in Egypt. Mubarak sees the Brotherhood, which gained considerable power in Egypt's last parliamentary elections, as a threat to secular power.

Egypt has begun barring senior Hamas leaders from entering Egypt due to concerns over their contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since Hamas rose to power and in view of the continuing strife between Hamas and Fatah, Egypt has been working through its security delegation in Gaza to reach a cease-fire among the factions. At the same time, Egypt has continuously held talks with Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Islamic Army over the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit."

***

The Usraeli Pharaoh has spoken!

Al-jazeera is quoting the Pentagon as saying that 10 U.S. helicopters were destroyed or damaged in a mortar attack by the resistance on a U.S. occupation base north of Baghdad.....

More details when available.

Helicopters hit by mortar rounds at U.S. base in Iraq, police say

"HAMID AHMED, Associated Press Writer

May 17, 2007 7:08 AM

BAGHDAD (AP) - Mortar rounds hit a U.S. Air Force base north of Baghdad on Thursday, destroying one helicopter and damaging nine others, police said.

The attack at Taji, a major Air Force on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, occurred about 2 a.m., the police said.

''There was an indirect fire attack on the base at Taji which resulted in damage to some aircraft,'' the military said. Indirect fire is a term the military generally uses to describe rocket or mortar attacks.

The attack destroyed one helicopter and damaged nine others, the police said.

An Iraqi civilian who works at the base said he saw about 16 damaged helicopters, some of them set on fire by the attack. The worker spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Many U.S. Black Hawk helicopters are based at Taji, including some equipped with medical equipment and manned by medics to rescue wounded U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in the Baghdad area.

Sunni insurgents have long been active in the area around Taji."

The US is arming Fatah in the hope of defeating Hamas. Meanwhile, everyone suffers

Laila El-Haddad

The Guardian

".....Fatah called for a general strike, and has taken to shooting into the air to scare people off the streets, stopping cars at self-imposed checkpoints, and detaining men with beards, in response to what they say was a deadly Hamas ambush of the presidential guard (Hamas has denied involvement saying their military forces were there re-enforcing their defenses on the border for fear of a possible Israeli attack, and hospital sources say the shrapnel is Israeli, not Palestinian, in origin). Israel has claimed responsiblity for the death of at least two of the Fatah guards. But by that point, it didn't matter anymore. The revenge machine was already in high-gear. In some locations, angry Palestinians reportedly pelted rocks at jeeps belonging to the presidential guard.....

But the news that really upset many here was word of the Israeli government briefly opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which it has shut down 50% of the year to average residents here, to allow US-funded, Jordanian-trained, Fatah reinforcements (450 members of the elite Badr Brigade) inside......

In his meetings with a group of Palestinian businessmen last January, Abrams said the US had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government. And just over a week ago, a 16-page secret American document was leaked to a Jordanian newspaper outlining an action plan for undermining and replacing the Palestinian national-unity government. The document outlines steps for building up Abbas and his security forces, leading to the dissolution of the parliament, a strengthening of US allies in Fatah in the lead-up to new elections......

The US has allocated as much as $84 million to this end, directly funding president Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah strongman Mohammad Dahlan and their security forces, which are often one and the same as the Fatah militias engaged in bitter battles with Hamas and even firing missiles at Israel.

That doesn't change the bitter resentment in the streets over what has unfolded, and the utter cynicism associated with it....."

Laila El-Haddad writing from Gaza City, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 16 May 2007

"Things have been crazy in Gaza over the past two days. Very crazy. In between working and actually trying to keep our wits about us as we've been holed up indoors for two days no, I've had little time to blog.

Things are tenusouly calm at the moment with on-again-off-again gunfire, which is better than it was only a few hours ago. But things in Gaza have a way of cahnging very quickly-for better or for worse. Volatility is its defining characteristic......

The most troubling part is how this is unfolding with such purpose, and yet with so little protest. There is something far more sinister behind it all of course, namely, the US's unambiguous plot to undermine the Unity Government by arming, training, and "stregthening" Abbas, Dahlan, and their respectivfe security forces. The latest plan was uncovered in a Jordanian newspaper last week before being whisked off the presses.

I talk about this in a Guardian article I wrote today.

For now, we wait, and see what tommorow brings."

A Very Good Article

By Tony Karon

".....The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it’s not from him that they get their orders. The leader to whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington’s anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas — in fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the Palestinian Authority president’s decision to join a unity government with Hamas......

Needless to say, only an Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that
the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )

But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy — and will, I still believe, repair to his former exile lodgings in Qatar in the not too distant future — Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf.

Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government. If Mahmoud Abbas has been reluctant to embrace the confrontational policy promoted by the White House, Dahlan has no such qualms. And given that Abbas has no political base of his own, he is dependent entirely on Washington and Dahlan.

The new provocation appears consistent with a revised U.S. plan, reported on by Mark Perry and Paul Woodward, that emphasized the urgency of toppling the unity government. They suggest the plan emanates from Abrams, who they say is operating at cross purposes with Condi Rice’s efforts to appease the Arab moderate regimes by reviving some form of peace process. They note, for example, that Jewish American sources have told the Forward and Haaretz that Abrams recently briefed Jewish Republicans and made clear to them that Rice’s efforts were merely a symbolic exercise aimed at showing Arab allies that the U.S. was “doing something,” but that President Bush would ensure that nothing would come of them, in the sense that Israel would not be required to make any concessions.

Whatever the precise breakdown within the Bush Administration, it’s plain that Dahlan, like Pinochet a quarter century, would not move onto a path of confrontation with an elected government unless he believed he had the sanction of powerful forces abroad to do so. If does move to turn the current street battle into a frontal assault on the unity government, chances are it will be because he got a green light from somewhere — and certainly not from Mahmoud Abbas......"

Vice Premier Peres: Israel is ready to help if Abbas asks

"Israel is ready to help Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as his Fatah faction battles Hamas Islamists in Gaza, Vice Premier Shimon Peres said on Wednesday.

At a news conference after a meeting with Estonia's prime minister, Peres said Israel would not intervene directly in hostilities but would respond to specific requests from Abbas.

"We should help Mr. Abbas in his fight against the terrorists," he said in answer to reporter questions. Asked about possible direct measures, Peres said: "We can only respond to Mr. Abbas's requests for help. We will not intervene in the war itself but if Mr. Abbas will request specific help, we will supply (it).".......

Italy offers to send troops to help quell fighting in Gaza

Italy would consider sending peacekeepers to the Gaza Strip if the Palestinian government requested help to end factional fighting, Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said on Wednesday.

But D'Alema called for political pressure, including from the Arab world, to end the fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

"If the Palestinian Authority asked for international help to guarantee security in Gaza, that could be considered," he aid. "Still, I believe that at this moment, one must exercise political pressure on the sides that are clashing that are paradoxically part of the same government."

Italy is leading the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. D'Alema said last year that if the Lebanon force proved effective, a similar force could be used in Gaza......"

If you were Israel, would you have any difficulty spotting Hamas fighters?
Just look for the beards; they are wearing uniforms for crying out loud!

Al-Nakba

By SONJA KARKAR
CounterPunch

".......The Palestinian al-Nakba has been extensively researched and documented by Israeli scholars whose works add weight to the Palestinians' own narrative. UCLA history professor Professor Gabriel Piterberg says "There's no question that there was substantial expulsion in 1948. I call it ethnic cleansing, and I am not the only Israeli to do so. People were removed from their homes, massacred, raped and lost their property on the basis of ethnic belonging . . . because they were Palestinian-Arabs." Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe is another academic who has recently written an eye-opening book on the subject ­ "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine". Lest anyone think that this has no relevance today, there is good precedence for remembering the victims of crimes against humanity. Jewish Holocaust museums, films and books are still proliferating around the world with no suggestion being made of laying the past to rest after more than 60 years. Remembering al-Nakba for the Palestinians is as important to them as remembering the Holocaust is for the Jews. The only difference is that the Palestinian refugees are a living reminder not only of Israel's past crimes, but of the crimes Israel is carrying out today. It is time to end the catastrophe."

By Robert Scheer

"On Sunday came news from the U.N. inspectors on the ground that Iran has made a breakthrough in the enrichment of uranium. It was previously thought that the Iranians were having trouble developing the tight engineering and high speeds needed to get their centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel. But inspectors, on a short-notice visit, came upon 1,300 centrifuges merrily spinning away and churning out the raw ingredient for massive carnage......

Great. Tehran’s religious fanatics have moved closer to the potential for nuclear conflagration, and what can bully-boy Bush do about it? Nothing. He shot his wad gambling on the invasion of Iraq, a nation that didn’t pose a WMD threat, and now needs Iran—which the United Nations fears may pose a real threat—to bail us out in Baghdad. Now it is bluffing time, with the Bush administration making all the appropriate warning noises about Iran’s nuclear program while cozying up to Tehran to help our puppet government in Baghdad pretend to be in power.....

A blunter assessment of the dark codependency motivating these talks was provided by Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari: “The U.S. is a major player and so is Iran, and there will be a room for some substantial discussions for the stability of Iraq.” Sure there will, but it will be on Iran’s terms, and soft-pedaling U.S. opposition to that country’s nuclear program is a given. So is the acceptance of a version of Iran’s theocratic model, exported to formerly secular Iraq......"

The privatisation of war

by Robert Greenwald
Click Here to Watch

Smoke rising above Hamas' headquarters in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah after it was hit in an IAF strike on Wednesday. (Reuters)

***

This is what happens when you are in the open and not observing guerrilla war doctrine. Unfortunately, the Palestinians never learn and are determined to stay that way.

Minister of culture calls for announcement of a state of emergency in response to Gaza chaos

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – Palestinian minister of culture, Bassam As-Salhi, on Wednesday called on Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister, Isma'il Haniyeh, to hold an emergency session for the government to discuss the latest deterioration in the Gaza Strip.

As-Salhi said that the session should discuss the declaration of a state of emergency in the Gaza Strip for 15 days according to Palestinian law.

According to As-Salhi, this step could pave the way to the implementation of the security plan."

***

The putsch is here; expect the worst!

عبد الباري عطوان

"عندما كتبت مقالاً قبل بضعة اشهر يحمل عنوان اخجل من كوني فلسطينياً في تعليقي علي الاشتباكات الدموية التي وقعت بين مسلحين من حركتي فتح و حماس ، فوجئت بان الكثيرين اساؤوا فهمي، واعتقدوا انني اتنصل من انتمائي الفلسطيني، بل ان بعض انصار حركة حماس ذهبوا الي ابعد من ذلك، وشنوا هجوماً شرساً ضدي، نشرنا بعضا منه في هذه الصحيفة، ونشر الكثير من المقالات في مواقع الحركة الرسمية، وبعضها خرج عن نطاق ادب الحوار، الذي من المفترض ان يكون من سمات المسلم واخلاقياته، وقالوا انني ساويت بين الجلاد والضحية في توجيه اللوم،
......
......
الذين وقعوا اتفاق مكة من الجانبين في مظاهرة احتفالية تخللتها خطابات مدحية غير مسبوقة، او غير معروفة في ادبيات الثوار لم يحصلوا علي اي ضمانات صلبة بامكانية رفع الحصار المالي التجويعي عن الشعب الفلسطيني، والاعتراف الدولي، والامريكي علي وجه الخصوص، بالحكومة التي ستتمخض عنه، الامر الذي اضعف مصداقية هؤلاء في اعين ابناء جلدتهم، وأدي الي تأكيد وجهة نظر المعارضين له، وللعملية السياسية تحت الاحتلال برمتها.
نعرف من هو الخاسر الاكبر من هذه الصدامات الدموية، مثلما نعرف ايضا من هو الكاسب الاكبر. فايهود اولمرت رئيس وزراء اسرائيل لم يعد بحاجة الي ارسال قواته لاجتياح قطاع غزة مجددا، وارتكاب مجازر جديدة ضد ابنائه الصامدين، ونسف بيوتهم فوق رؤوس ساكنيها مثلما جرت العادة في المرات السابقة، فمن المؤلم ان المتناحرين علي المناصب الوزارية، والصلاحيات الوهمية قد اعفوه من هذه المهمة، وخففوا الضغوط الداخلية علي حكومته، واخرجوه، والدولة العبرية بأسرها من ازمتها السياسية الراهنة.
فهل هناك حمقي واغبياء سياسيا ووطنيا اكثر من هؤلاء؟
"

Stealing the Geography, then the History: First Palestinian Land, then Palestinian Heritage
By Hamed Najeeb

One Nakba After Another: Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia,....
By Naser Jafari

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"......Leaving Baghdad at night, past curfew time, is one of the saddest experiences of our time. There are just a few dim lights down on the ground - as if the former pride and splendor of Islam are enveloped in a shroud. The only moving object is - what else - a serpentine US convoy about to go on a search-and-destroy mission in "normal life".

The Bush/Cheney half-trillion-dollar (so far) Iraq adventure razed to the ground an entire Arab state. Not just any Arab state; the cradle of civilization as we know it has been hurled back to medieval times (but with mobile phones for everyone; an Iraqna SIM card costs only US$10).

Blowback will be perennial: the "sanctions generation" - the angry young men who grew up deprived of everything during the 1990s - will never, ever forget it. Even if the Iraqi Parliament votes a timeline for the end of the occupation - as Sadrist leader Nasr al-Roubaie told Asia Times Online two weeks ago.

Iraq is and will remain the true heart of darkness of the early 21st century. Forget about Russia or China; now, finally, the administration of President George W Bush, the military-industrial complex and assorted armchair warriors can finally be assured that the United States has found an enemy for life. "

A Very Good Piece

by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt

"......and finally, this year, a magisterial third and final volume, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, appeared. No one should miss it. It lays out in chilling detail the ways in which imperial overstretch imperils the American republic and what's left of our democratic system as well as the American economy.

Now, in a step beyond even his latest book, Johnson considers whether we can end our empire before it ends us......

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem......

Normally, a proposed list of reforms like this would simply be rejected as utopian. I understand this reaction. I do want to stress, however, that failure to undertake such reforms would mean condemning the United States to the fate that befell the Roman Republic and all other empires since then. That is why I gave my book Nemesis the subtitle "The Last Days of the American Republic."

When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or – even more improbably – "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." "

Where there's always another world war brewing…

By Justin Raimondo

"......The neocons, however, are not too concerned with such bothersome details: just let them reconstitute the heyday of their Cold Warrior mentality, revamp and refit it with fresh rhetoric and a new "grand theory," and we're off to what Podhoretz deems "World War IV." He writes:

"Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle."

Relax, we're in "the early stages." If the horror, tragedy, and futility of Iraq fills you with despair, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Poddy & Co. have given themselves lots of scope for their grand strategy and plenty of rationales for invading and destroying the Muslim nations of the world, one by one – and the prime candidate, as Podhoretz makes clear is Iran, "the most dangerous of all" because of its nuclear ambitions.....

Yet the economic ruin of the U.S. and much of the rest of the world is a small price to pay for the security of Israel, which is "existentially" threatened, as one Israeli politician put it, by Iran's nuclear program. Let the world economy plunge into the depths of a global depression; let the heavens cry out in pain at the sight of so much death and destruction; let a million jihadists rise up to threaten the safety and security of Americans everywhere. All that pales into insignificance when we realize that it's all part of the struggle against "Islamofascism." Citing John McCain – who else?! – Poddy opines: "The only thing worse than bombing Iran … is allowing Iran to get the bomb.".......

What world is Norman Podhoretz living in? Short answer: one that bears not the slightest resemblance to reality. In a normal world, his ravings would be no more important than the deranged tirades of the village nutcase. To our horror, however, we are living in a reality where Podhoretz's twisted ideology is largely shared by the most powerful man on earth. Therefore, when Poddy writes "my guess is that [Bush] intends, within the next 21 months, to order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities from the three U.S. aircraft carriers already sitting nearby," we might very well take him seriously. "

George Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, and this is reflected in declining US power across the globe.

By Simon Tisdall
The Guardian

"American accusations that European countries have ganged up against the Bush administration in the Paul Wolfowitz row hide a deeper worry: that the rapidly declining power at home of the most unpopular, least respected president since Richard Nixon is encouraging multiple challenges to US authority and interests around the world.

Washington's insecurity is rooted in the collapse in George Bush's domestic support and an apparent accompanying failure of national confidence. The president's approval rating hit a new low of 28% earlier this month, according to a Newsweek poll. His aggregate figures have been stuck at 35% or less since last autumn - far below the norm for an incumbent half way through a second term.

The "badness of King George", as Mr Bush's fall from imperial grace has been dubbed, is creating a power vacuum around the White House. The earliest ever start to the election campaign to replace him is now being matched, according to many commentators, by the longest ever "lame duck" presidency.

"The country doesn't believe George Bush, it doesn't trust him, and with 19 months to go it's only going to get worse," said Ed Rollins, a famed Republican strategist, speaking to US columnist Albert Hunt. "There is nothing the president can do to get his numbers back up."

The deepening gloom around Mr Bush is largely attributed to the Iraq quagmire, though domestic policy failures and continuing security worries also play a part. And the depression may be catching. According to an AP-Ipsos poll this week, 71% of Americans believe their country is "on the wrong track". Only 35% believe the Democrat-controlled Congress, elected last November, is doing a good job (mostly because it has failed so far to force a change of course on Iraq)......

Now the majority takes a more chastened, pragmatic view, with 58% agreeing that: "it is a dangerous illusion to believe America is superior to other nations; we should not be attempting to reshape other nations in light of our values"......"

"أكدت حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" أنها تتابع بدقة الأنباء التي تتوارد وبثتها وكالات الأنباء وأكدها مسؤولون في معبر رفح الحدودي حول دخول نحو 450 عنصراً مما يسمى "تنفيذية فتح"، بعد ظهر اليوم الثلاثاء (15/5)، إلى قطاع غزة بعد أن تلقوا تدريبات عسكرية في جمهورية مصر العربية بهدف خوض مواجهة ضد حركة "حماس".

وتساءلت الحركة، في بيان صادر عنها، تلقى "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" نسخة منه ابتداء "كيف تم فتح معبر رفح الذي لم يفتح سابقاً للمرضي والجرحى أو لجثامين الشهداء والوفيات من الفلسطينيين، ولا حتى لمن قضوا الليالي الطوال ينتظرون على المعبر وسط البرد القارص دون معين إلا الله، الأمر الذي يضع علامات استفهام كبيرة على من وقعوا اتفاق المعبر وخفاياه!!".

وأكد "حماس" على أن موافقة حكومة الاحتلال الصهيوني على دخول عناصر مسلحة من فتح بهذا الشكل والتوقيت بالذات، "يشير بوضوح إلى الجهة التي تتلقى الدعم من العدو ضد أبناء شعبه". مشددة على أنه "رغم الجراح إلا أنها ملتزمة بالاتفاق الموقع مع رئيس الوزراء ووفد حركة فتح"، مشيرة إلى أنها في الوقت نفسه لن تسمح لأحد بإثارة الفتنة والصراع، وستقطع كل يد تمتد على أبنائها ورموزها وقادتها.

وطالبت "حماس" رئيس السلطة محمود عباس، بصفته أيضاً الرجل الأول في "فتح"، إلى "متابعة الأمر بقوة وحزم حتى لا يقع ما لا تحمد عقباه، والتحقيق في كيفية مرور هؤلاء إلى غزة رغم أن معبر رفح مغلق، ووقف مثيري الفتن عند حدهم"."

Kidnapping in Youssufiyah [Notice the use of the word kidnapping by Cockburn]

By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch

"......The capture of Americans - like the hostages in Lebanon in the Eighties or in the Tehran embassy in 1979 - has traditionally had a greater impact on the US public than the death of soldiers. It is the nightmare of American commanders, going all the way to the Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, for US servicemen to be in enemy hands. The loss of these three prisoners could prove to be even more significant this time, as the public is already firmly against the war. A drawn-out hostage crisis, that ends in tragedy, could be the final blow to President's Bush's faltering support amongst Republicans.

For the soldiers searching for the three men, the US faces the additional danger of losing even more because of booby traps and roadside bombs......"

"Gaza – Ma'an – The Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip announced the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Osama Al-Madhoun and said that he was one of the most eminent leaders of the Fatah-affiliated Al Mujahideen Brigades.

Al-Madhoun was killed at the hands of Israeli troops who shot at the Palestinian national security forces that were fighting with Hamas gunmen near the Karni crossing.

Fatah demanded that the martyrdom of Al-Madhoun stand as a clear message to all Palestinian factions and forces to be united behind one goal: "resistance against the Israeli occupation whose forces do not have mercy even on the plants and the stones, when they belong to the Palestinian people.""

By Kurt Nimmo

"Calling the ding-a-lings together, Bush sketched out the “existential threat to the United States from a nuclear Iran,” as Max Blumenthal explains it. “I was invited to go to Washington DC to meet with President Bush in the White House along with 12 or 13 other leaders of the pro-family movement,” James Dobson, chairman of the board of Focus on the Family, told his radio audience. “I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington,” he said. “Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one we can lose ten.”

I’m experiencing that old déjà vu feeling again. Iraq has nukes or biologicals. Saddam is Hitler. Saddam and al-Qaeda will unleash a fury against the United States. Kindergarten children and old ladies will suffer and die. We have to do something. We have to mass murder a whole lot of people. Turn the place into a glass parking lot......

Naturally, all of this nonsense works dandy for the neocons, determined to attack not only Iran but Syria and in fact undermine the whole of the Muslim Middle East. If it takes absurd radio broadcasts by fanatical Christian Zionists and prophesy-reading novelists to push their mass murder message, so be it.

In the demented realm of Bushzarro world, where up is down and black is white, it is all good. "

Angry Wolfowitz in four-letter tirade

Richard Adams in Washington
Tuesday May 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

"An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details published last night.

Under fire for the lavish package given to Shaha Riza, a World Bank employee and Mr Wolfowitz's girlfriend when he became president, an official investigation into the controversy has found that Mr Wolfowitz broke bank rules and violated his own contract – setting off a struggle between US and European governments over Mr Wolfowitz's future.

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

The remarks were published in a report detailing the controversy that erupted last month after the size of Ms Riza's pay rises was revealed. The report slates Mr Wolfowitz for his "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest", saying: "Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply."....."

By Khalid Amayreh

"......The right of return remains the heart and soul of the Palestinian question, despite the passage of 60 years since ethnic East European Ashkenazi supremacists massacred and terrorized the bulk of the native Palestinians to flee for their lives.

Today, Israel, in concert with its guardian ally, the United States, continues to reject the concept of repatriation of the Palestinian refugees to their former homes and villages in what is now Israel.

To rationalize this essentially racist discourse, Israeli and Zionist apologists present four main arguments, which are as unethical as they are mendacious......

The rule of international law is very clear on this. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948, states in its Article 13 that, “Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own and to return his country.”....

Besides, Israel has no more right to be racist, e.g. exclusively Jewish, than Apartheid South Africa had the right to be exclusively or predominantly white.

Indeed, the absurdity of this argument becomes especially relevant when we remember that maintaining Israel’s Jewish identity is only a euphemism for having the right to discriminate against non-Jews by denying them their human and civil rights.....

In brief, the right of return for Palestinian refugees is a sacred right that should never ever be compromised or dealt with lightly. Nor should it be subject to controversy and dispute just as the rightful owner’s right to recover his or her stolen property from a thief is not subject to dispute and controversy. More to the point, the passage of sixty years must never be allowed to erode or undermine that right.....

Finally, it is imperative to point out that those Palestinian “leaders” who from time to time make stupid remarks suggesting “flexibility” on the right of return are actually indulging in the moral equivalent of national treason, knowingly or unknowingly.

After all, who gave them the right to speak on behalf of the refugees who are scattered all over the globe?

If they want to appease their Zionist bankrollers, let them do it at their own expense, not at the refugees’ expense....."

An Explosive Story and a Must Read

By Mark Perry and Paul Woodward
Asia Times

"On April 30, the Jordanian weekly newspaper Al-Majd published a story about a 16-page secret document, an "Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency" that called for undermining and replacing the Palestinian national-unity government.

The document outlined steps that would strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, build up Palestinian security forces under his command, lead to the dissolution of the Palestinian Parliament, and strengthen US allies in Fatah in a lead-up to parliamentary elections that Abbas would call for early this autumn.

The Majd document is based on a Jordanian government translation of a reputed US intelligence document that was obtained by the newspaper from a Jordanian government official. The document, an official at the newspaper said, was drawn up by "Arab and American parties" and "presented to Palestinian President Abbas by the head of an Arab intelligence agency". The document is explosive.

Should Abbas give his agreement to the plan - which is not yet certain - he would be complicit in a program to undermine his own government.

Understanding the implications of the document, Jordanian government officials ordered that the publisher's printing house stop the presses while that edition's plates were confiscated. "The Jordanian security services, which censor newspapers in advance, intervened during the night to stop our print-run," confirmed Fahd Al Rimawi, an editor at Al-Majd.

On May 1, the Jordanian government explained its decision in a statement issued by the president of the Jordanian Press Association, Tareq al-Moumani. The statement claimed that Al-Majd had repeatedly published reports "based on information taken from intelligence sources and offends the country's security and interests".

Moumani explained that the printing house of the Jordanian Press Foundation had refused to print the April 30 edition because it included news reports that were harmful to Jordan "and offended a sisterly state". The "sisterly state" referred to is the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to published sources......

Even so, Al-Majd's publication of the "Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency" might have faded into obscurity were it not for a May 4 article by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz detailing a US-sponsored "Benchmarks for Agreement on Movement and Access". The "Acceleration Benchmarks" document detailed a series of deadlines for Israel to begin dismantling a large number of its security obstacles and checkpoints in the West Bank - allowing increased access in the occupied territories.

The appearance of the "Benchmarks" document within days of the disclosure of the Majd document suggests a connection, though despite appearances, the former may not in fact be a component of the latter. On the contrary, the disclosure of the two plans in quick succession may reflect competing agendas coming from the US State Department and the White House.

Not surprisingly, the US press has failed to pick up on either the Majd or Haaretz story and has ignored the existence of the White House program aimed at undermining the Hamas government (see No-goodniks and the Palestinian shootout, Asia Times Online, January 9). The Majd document came to the attention of a wider audience when the Amman incident was reported in the weblog Missing Links, which translated sections of the document from Arabic and provided analysis on the proposed plan.

The details of the Majd incident, the publication of the "Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency", the commentary provided by Missing Links, and the subsequent publication of the additional US document in Haaretz have now made it possible to detail how the United States (or at least one faction of policymakers inside the administration) intends to implement its program to implement a "soft coup" against the Palestinian unity government.

America's 'action plan'
In the wake of the February Mecca Agreement, which called for the formation of a Palestinian unity government, White House officials scrambled to recast their anti-Hamas program. The resulting "action plan" relies heavily on the disbursement of US funds to build President Abbas' security forces at the same time that it escalates the delivery of money to specific development projects affiliated with his office.

The plan as delivered to Abbas, according to a Fatah official, is quite detailed - salaries would be provided to those parts of the Palestinian government closely affiliated with Fatah and supported by Abbas. The plan envisages delivering "a strong blow to Hamas by supplying the Palestinian people with their immediate economic needs through the presidency and Fatah". At the same time, the international boycott of Hamas would stay in place and Hamas-affiliated programs would be starved of funds.

Senior Fatah officials who oppose the program confirm the Majd claim that the action plan was drawn up between the White House and Arab intelligence officials. "You can see the hand of [Egyptian intelligence chief] Omar Sulieman in this," a Fatah official said. "It is no secret that he has been working with the Americans to strengthen Fatah."

But this Fatah official refused to implicate anyone in the Jordanian government, who he claimed "would be much more skeptical of this kind of thing - which may be why the document was leaked in the first place". And while this Fatah official could not say for certain who in the White House would author such a program, the document reflects the long-held views of White House Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams - known as the major impetus behind the rearming of Abbas' security force.

US worries over the increasingly weak position of Abbas are made clear in the action plan's language: "In the absence of strong efforts by Abbas to protect the position of the presidency as the center of gravity of the Palestinian leadership, it can be expected that international support for him will diminish and there won't be enthusiastic cooperation with him," the plan says.

"And a growing number of countries, including the European Union and the G8 [Group of Eight], will start to look for Palestinian partners that are more acceptable and more credible, and more able to make advances in security and governance. And this would strengthen the position of Hamas within Palestinian society, and would further weaken Fatah and the Palestinian presidency. And it would also diminish the chances for early elections."

The plan re-emphasizes the US commitment to building Abbas' security service, a program now funded by some US$59 million in direct congressionally approved security assistance. The money "will deter Hamas or any other faction from any attempt at escalation, as long as the security control of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah is on a firm basis". The plan also counts on the support of the EU and World Bank.

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should propose, in consultation with the World Bank and the European Union, a plan that defines specific sectors and projects that are in need of financing, and that will show useful and tangible results on the ground in the space of six to nine months, centering on the alleviation of poverty and unemployment," the plan notes. "And since some projects will take more than nine months, there should be a guarantee of adequate results within the nine months. This is so as to guarantee the usefulness of these projects before the elections."

Anticipating that Abbas' popularity would now be soaring - and money to his supporters flowing through his office - the plan proposes that Israel act to enhance Abbas' credibility further by removing roadblocks and barricades in the West Bank and easing Palestinian access to Gaza. "Abbas will need to be supplied with the means, both material and legal, to govern and to strengthen his credibility and legitimacy, so that he can comfortably call for parliamentary elections by the beginning of autumn 2007."

Perhaps the most interesting part of the action plan is in its authors' apparent need to cover up the fact that it is being proposed by the US and its Arab - Jordanian and Egyptian - allies. The plan states that it is designed to be presented to the Palestinians as something for them to support and to obtain the agreement of the United States and the Arab quartet, as a first step.

This would give Israel and the Europeans assurance that Abbas is taking the lead. The deception would be complete and US hands would be clean: the "action plan" would not be a US plan to undermine the Palestinian unity government - it would be Abbas' own plan.

Israel's role
On May 4, Haaretz published the US security plan for the West Bank and Gaza, which the newspaper had received from Israeli government officials on April 25. The document - authored by US General Keith Dayton, US Ambassador to Israel Dick Jones, and Consul-General in Jerusalem Jacob Walles - took more than a month to write, according to an American diplomat, and was begun in mid-March soon after the announcement of the formation of a Palestinian unity government.

The timing of the writing of the Haaretz document roughly coincides then with the "action plan" as written for the approval of Abbas, and indeed the two appear connected, either as interrelated plans or, perhaps more likely, reflecting an ongoing struggle inside Washington over who controls Middle East policymaking.

The goal of the US-sponsored "Benchmarks" document is to set a schedule for the removal of Israeli roadblocks and the opening of travel and trade passages in the occupied territories. But the document also contains a strong secondary component, which requires that Israel "approve requests for weapons, munitions and equipment required by defense forces" loyal to Abbas.

The plan's components envisage that Israelis and Palestinians will engage in a coordinated series of actions that will expand PA security control to all sectors of Gaza and the West Bank. Mohammad Dahlan, the newly named head of Abbas' National Security Council, will be charged with drawing up and implementing a security plan that will ensure this. Israel will then slowly ease travel restrictions in specific areas of the West Bank according to a detailed schedule.

But there are two key components of the program - first, that Israel will approve and support the transfer of "armaments, ammunition and equipment" to Dahlan's forces at Dayton's direction and at his specific request and that, in exchange, the PA security forces will implement a program that will suppress Qassam rocket fire into Israel.

According to the "Benchmarks" document, Dahlan would be required to develop a plan against Qassam rockets with the support of President Abbas by no later than June 21, and the forces under Dahlan must be deployed to problem areas no later than that date. The Palestinian forces would also be required to prevent arms smuggling in the Rafah area in coordination with Israel - a long-standing sore point with senior Israel Defense Forces officials since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Within 24 hours of the "Benchmarks" document's publication, Abbas endorsed it. But the plan was swiftly dismissed by Hamas. The organization's Damascus-based leader, Khalid Meshaal, declared that the proposal was "a farce", as it implied that Israeli checkpoints would only be removed as the Palestinians slowly ratcheted down their resistance to the occupation.

"The equation has now become dismantling the checkpoints in exchange for ending the Palestinian resistance," Meshaal said. The Israeli government also hesitated, saying that it would study the proposal. Israeli defense officials took a much harder line, saying that the adoption of the plan would harm Israeli security.

Washington moved quickly to reassure its ally. The plan merely promoted "suggestions and ideas that we have circulated", a State Department spokesman said. "It's not any kind of formal agreement nor is it something that is being enforced on anybody." Four days later, a US Embassy official in Tel Aviv said it was not a "take it or leave it" document, but "an informal draft" of "suggestions" that could "help facilitate discussion, engagement and action".

In the wake of the Majd incident and the publication of the "Benchmarks" document in Haaretz, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abruptly canceled her trip to Israel, citing "political turmoil" in the Israeli government. In truth, the real turmoil is in Washington, where successive attempts to jump-start a peace process have in effect been short-circuited by Rice's diplomatic fecklessness ("We just don't think she has the president's mandate," an Israeli official notes), or by the White House's willful disregard of Rice's efforts to show America's allies that the US will move to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Condi is just not in charge of your Middle East policy," one Israeli official commented. "Every time she turns around, Elliott Abrams is slapping her down. It's embarrassing." The embarrassment has now become public.

In a breakfast meeting at the White House last Thursday, Abrams told a group of Jewish Republicans that they should not put too much stock in efforts to pressure Israel to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. "He said that pressure on Israel was all for show," a congressional staffer familiar with the meeting said, "and that it was being done just to satisfy the Europeans and Arabs.

"He said, 'You know, we have to show that we're doing something. You really shouldn't worry about it.'"

Abrams, according to a report on the same meeting that appeared in Haaretz, said the talks among Rice, Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on prospective negotiations was just "process for the sake of process". The Haaretz report noted that "some of the attendees understood Abrams' comments as an assurance that the peace initiative promoted by Rice doesn't have the full backing of President George W Bush".

Reports of Abrams' comments brought an immediate White House response: "It is inaccurate to suggest that the White House and State Department are at odds on this issue, for the entire administration - including Mr Abrams - is committed to pursuing it [Rice's peace initiative] and the rest of the president's agenda."

Despite this, it is difficult to come to the conclusion that Rice's program - enforcing Israeli compliance with dropping barriers in the West Bank and easing access to Gaza - will be implemented while on the other hand the US program to undermine Hamas seems destined to continue. And in the end, Washington observers note, it is likely that in the current Abrams-Rice tussle, Abrams will win - and the Palestinians will lose."

"......Later in the day, Western sources said hundreds of fighters loyal to Fatah faction crossed into Gaza from Egypt on Tuesday as possible reinforcements in fighting against Hamas militant. Fatah said the group that crossed into Gaza did not do so to fight Hamas.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was briefly opened to readmit a 450-strong Fatah contingent into the coastal strip, according to the sources, who spoke in Israel on condition of anonymity. The sources said the crossing was opened, with Israeli consent, in only one direction to allow in the Fatah contingent. Once they crossed into Gaza, the crossing was re-closed......."

French immigrant confesses to killing Arab cab driver after inviting him for coffee at his Tel Aviv apartment

"A French immigrant confessed on Monday to the murder of an Arab taxi driver in an apparent hate crime, police said.

The immigrant and his brother invited the taxi driver to their Tel Aviv apartment on Yona Hanavi Street "for coffee" after he had driven them from Jerusalem.

Police said the throat of 35-year-old Taisir Karaki of Beit Hanina had been slit and his body bore the signs of a violent attack......"

Rising racism is a breading ground for hate crimes, says MK Ahmad Tibi, responding to Taisir Karaki's murder in TA. Turning words into actions, says MK Napa, was just a matter of time

U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq.........3,401

"Coalition" Troops Killed..........3,675

U.S. Troops Wounded............25,090

By Ali Abunimah

"Chicago (14 May 2007) - As Israel celebrates 59 years of independence, Palestinians on May 14 commemorate the Nakba, the catastrophe of expulsion and decades of exile that continue to this day.....

One of the hard – but not impossible – tasks will be convincing many Israelis of the viability of a single-state solution. In 2004, for example, Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has written several books documenting the forced expulsion of the Palestinians, said that a "Jewish state would not have come into existence without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them." But Mr. Morris is no bleeding heart. He added, "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing." If Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, could be faulted, Morris said, it was because he "did not complete the transfer in 1948."......

But while some see Israel as a miracle, many Israelis themselves recognize that the Zionist project has been far from a success: Today the number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians inhabiting the country is roughly equal at about 5 million each. Just more than 1 million Palestinians live as citizens of Israel, albeit with inferior rights, while almost 4 million live under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Their high birthrate means that in a few years, Palestinians will once again become the majority as they were prior to 1948.

To assert, as Israel does, that it has a right to be a "Jewish state" means to recognize that it has a right to manipulate demographics for the purpose of ethnic domination. This outlook violates fundamental human rights.....

Palestine/Israel is as unpartitionable as was South Africa and Northern Ireland, where similar ethnic conflicts had also defied resolution for generations....."

حمّل حرس الرئاسة مسؤولية تدهور الأوضاع

"حمّل القيادي في حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"، الدكتور صلاح البردويل، مسؤولية تدهور الأوضاع الأمنية، التي أدت إلى تجديد استقالة وزير الداخلية، إلى حرس الرئاسة وأجهزة الأمن الخاضعة لإمرة رئيس السلطة والتي يقودها رشيد أبو شباك.

وقال البردويل في تصريحات خاصة لـ "قدس برس": "لقد وعد الرئيس محمود عباس وزير الداخلية بأن تكون الأجهزة الأمنية تحت إمرته لتنفيذ الخطة الأمنية، وكلف شخصاً من حرس الرئاسة للتنسيق معه، لكن ما أن اتصل وزير الداخلية بضابط الأمن حتى رفض الاستجابة لأوامره".

واعتبر الناطق باسم كتلة "التغيير والإصلاح" البرلمانية، أن التدخل "المفرط" في شؤون وزير الداخلية، هو الذي أفشل اتفاق بين حركتي "فتح" و"حماس" لوقف الاقتتال بينهما، وقال: "بالأمس تم التوصل إلى اتفاق بين الحركتين على وقف الاقتتال ورفع الحواجز، ولكننا فوجئنا فجر هذا اليوم بأنه تم نقض الاتفاق بالكامل، حيث فاجأ حرس الرئاسة بمهاجمة موقع للقوة التنفيذية غرب غزة، ونصبوا الحواجز في كل مكان، وكل من له لحية أو امرأة منقبة تتعرض للتحقيق والاختطاف والتعذيب".

وذكر البردويل أن حرس الرئاسة أقدم على إعدام صحفيين اثنين على بعد أمتار من بيت الرئيس، "وعلى مرأى ومسمع من الناس". وأشار إلى أنهم طالبوا بالكشف عن قتلة بهاء أبو جراد لكنه قال: "لم نتلق ردا على ذلك لأن الأمر يتعلق بتصفية حسابات داخلية لا علاقة لها بحماس". ورجح أن يكون ذلك ضمن خطة متكاملة الهدف منها فرض الخطة الأمنية الأمريكية.

ووصف القيادي في "حماس" ما يجري على الساحة الفلسطينية، على أنه "تمرد عسكري"، هدفه حل حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، وأضاف: "ما يؤكد هذا التحليل أن ياسر عبد ربه دعا قبل قليل إلى عصيان مدني للمطالبة بحل القوة التنفيذية، وهو في الحقيقة يريد حل الحكومة وتنفيذ الخطة الأمنية الأمريكية". "

***

This is what I have been warning about. I think that this is only the beginning of the attempt to carry out Condoleezza's plan to crush the resistance and to impose a "solution" that returns the Palestinians to the custody of the clown king of Jordan. Usrael couldn't find a better Palestinian Karzai than Abbas and he is carrying out their instructions.

This is a critical stage.

Gaza sources say Hamas ambushed US convoy, seized stockpile of weapons aimed for Fatah militias

An Important Article, Contributed by Fatima

"Hamas ambushed a convoy in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and seized a stockpile of US weapons transferred in recent months to militias associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, according to Hamas and Fatah sources.

"We obtained the US weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah. Our fighters are aware of the American and Israeli conspiracies to topple our government. We're trained and well prepared to defeat the American-backed (Palestinian) agents," said a top member of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip......

Hamas won most battles

The US has transferred large quantities of weapons to Fatah in recent months to back Abbas' military organizations against Hamas. Fatah and Hamas engaged in months of factional clashes until the two forged a unity government in February. But renewed fighting in Gaza in recent days has threatened to torpedo the unity deal.

The last confirmed US weapons transfer to the Palestinians took place last May and consisted of 3,000 assault rifles, but WND reported multiple others transfers were since delivered to Fatah, including a cache of 7,000 rifles last January and about 8,000 assault rifles in February.

While the weapons were meant to bolster Fatah in Gaza, Hamas has reportedly won most battles against the US-backed militias.....

Fatah infiltrated by Hamas

A top Palestinian intelligence official told WND: "We are leading a large number of investigations and some of the results prove that such an infiltration by Hamas (of Fatah's security and intelligence forces) exists.

"I can say that in some cases we diagnosed a deep infiltration to high posts in some Fatah security services," the high-ranking Palestinian intelligence officer told WND. "In some cases we believe there are officers that are exposed to very sensitive information."

He said that since the US announced it is providing Abbas' forces with additional funds, Fatah intelligence officials at the direction of American security coordinators here have been attempting to expel Hamas infiltrators. He said the past month "dozens" of members of Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad were found operating in the Fatah forces."

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 14 May 2007

"It should have happened sooner, but at least it has happened now. Israel has been exposed by the august World Bank for its oppressive control of the West Bank. Three weeks before global protests begin against 40 years of Israel's occupation, the report reveals what every government knows, but not one has been prepared to stop. Effectively, the report challenges the notion of a viable two-state solution under Israel's current restrictions and illegal land appropriations.....

The Bank's report is timely and welcome, but curiously it does not mention the effects of the sanctions that the West and Israel imposed on the Palestinians at the beginning of last year. At the time, the World Bank had stated that the Palestinian economy would shrink by 27 percent in 2006 -- "a one year contraction that compares to the Great Depression in the US". In other words, the Palestinian economy was in danger of collapse even then and the warnings were not acted upon. Instead, the world cavalierly continued with its sanctions because it did not approve of the newly elected Hamas government....."

The Palestinian "Security Plan"
By Baha Boukhari

by Tom Engelhardt

"What value has a human life?

We usually think of this in terms of sentiment – of memories, grief, love, longing, of everything, in short, that is too deep and valuable to put a price upon. Then again, is anything in our world truly priceless?......

So there we have it. In the modern version of "child slaughter," the U.S. government has indeed offered the world an evaluation of what price slaughter should exact in the deaths of innocents everywhere:

The value of an innocent civilian slaughtered by al-Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, to his or her family: $1.8 million.

The value of an innocent civilian slaughtered at Haditha, Iraq, by U.S. Marines: $2,500.

The value of an innocent civilian slaughtered by U.S. Marines near Jalalabad, Afghanistan: $2,000.

Never say that the U.S. government is incapable of putting a price on the deaths of innocents."

Beware bipartisan 'consensus' on Iraq

By Justin Raimondo

"The news I have for "netroots" types and Huffington Post liberals who see the Democratic Party as the major if not only hope for the antiwar movement can be summed up in two words: forget it. Majority leader Sen. Harry Reid recently let the cat out of the bag when he said, "There is new reason this week to believe that a bipartisan consensus on Iraq is emerging."

Translation: the sellout is coming, if it isn't already here......

The cure is not to be found in partisan politics or in the wishful thinking of Hollywood liberals who invest their hopes in whatever rising star in the Democratic political firmament is fashionable at the moment. The only antidote is a third-party effort to expose and defeat both wings of the War Party and hold them to account. A nationwide antiwar electoral campaign pledged to defeat all pro-war members of Congress – especially Democrats– and actively campaign against all pro-war candidates for president would do much to set the stage for a complete cure.

Before that is possible, however, grassroots activists must lose their illusions about the Democratic Party – and recognize the necessity of defeating pro-war Democrats, not just in primaries but in the general election. The third-party option must be considered, and this will separate those whose first loyalty is to the Democrats from those whose allegiance is to the cause of peace.

Let's separate the wheat from the chaff, the "benchmarks" from the bullsh*t, and the partisan hacks from the healthy body of the antiwar movement. Because ending this war isn't a partisan issue – it's a moral imperative. "

By Khalid Amayreh in East Jerusalem

"For several days now, the global Zionist media has been waging a vitriolic campaign of vilification against Palestinians for running a children's show on a private TV station in Gaza, which allegedly incites hatred of Israel.

One excited CNN correspondent in Jerusalem reported a few days ago that she was deeply disgusted by the show, called Tomorrow’s Pioneers, for glorifying the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli apartheid regime.

Normally, CNN and similar Zionist mouthpieces don’t bother giving context to stories that might prompt viewers to ask questions about why Israelis are hated by Palestinians and the bulk of the civilized world.

Well, does Israel really expect her Palestinian victims to love their tormentors and persecutors?

Israel, after all, stole their country, destroyed their homes, bulldozed their farms and obliterated their villages from time immemorial from the face of earth. Moreover, Israel ravaged their lives, murdered their children, bombed their schools, poisoned their water and savaged them in ways unseen since Hitler’s armies rampaged through Europe more than sixty years ago.

And at the top of all of this, Israel banished the bulk of the Palestinian people to the four corners of the globe where many of them are living the lives of dogs in squalid, filthy refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

It is really hard to believe that the Israelis are surprised to have found out that they are hated so much by Palestinians......

Moreover, are Jewish cultural and religious traditions rife with love for the enemies of the Jews? Does Judaism say “love thy enemy?"

Don’t Jews hate and curse Haman to his day during the Purim holiday?

In short, Zionist Jews are the last people on earth who are morally fit to lecture humanity, let alone the Palestinians, their enduring victims, on the virtues of love and the evils of hate.

After all, who more than Zionists embodies the evils of hate in our time? "

"Last Tuesday, Gush Shalom hosted a public debate between Uri Avnery and Ilan Pappe on the subject "Two States or One State". The event took place in a Tel-Aviv hall and attracted much attention. The full text of the two-hour debate will be published as soon as possible.......

"....And in order for this dialogue to start and grow, let us admit that despite our important efforts, we here with our own forces cannot stop ever-escalating occupation. Because occupation proceeds from the same ideological infrastructure on which the 1948 ethnic cleansing was erected, because of which the army massacred the inhaibitants of Kufr Quassem, because of which the lands of the Galilee, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were confiscated, and in whose name there take place every day detentions and killings without trial. The most murderous manifestation of this ideology is now in the Territories. It should and must be stopped soonest. For that, no expedient which has not yet been tried should be rejected. The appeal of Palestinian civil society for imposing boycotts and sanctions should be heeded......" -- Ilan Pappe

"....We have never heard answers to the two decisive questions about the One State solution: how will it come about and how will it function in practice? But without clear answers to these questions, this is not a plan but a vision, at best......" -- Uri Avnery"

"Activists and community members will converge May 14 at Harvard Business School (HBS) in search of notorious war criminal Dan Halutz, last spotted there attending an executive management course.

The Alliance for Justice in the Middle East (AJME), based at Harvard University, is launching a search for the elusive Halutz, distributing WANTED posters, making inquiries, and soliciting the help of the campus community.

AJME hopes that this week's actions will alert the community to the presence of this war criminal on the loose and lead to more information on his whereabouts.

A seasoned war criminal with a long record of human rights abuses in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Halutz is now rubbing elbows with top CEOs and business leaders at HBS in an exclusive two-month, $56,000 executive training program......

In the meantime, please take the time to write to Harvard administrators to express YOUR concern about the university's pattern of admitting and hiring war criminals and human rights abusers......"

George Bisharat, The San Francisco Chronicle, 13 May 2007

"Why do some people have the power to remember, while others are asked to forget? That question is especially poignant at this time of year, as we move from Holocaust Remembrance day in early spring to Monday's anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948.

In the months surrounding that date, Jewish forces expelled, or intimidated into flight, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians. A living, breathing, society that had existed in Palestine for centuries was smashed and fragmented, and a new society built on its ruins......

Equally importantly, however, memory can provide a blueprint for the future -- a vision of a solution to seek, or an outcome to avoid. My Palestinian father grew up in Jerusalem before Israel was founded and the Palestinians expelled, when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in peace and mutual respect. Recalling that past provides a vision for an alternative future -- one involving equal rights and tolerance, rather than the domination of one ethno-religious group over others.

Thus, what Palestinians are really being commanded is not just to forget their past, but instead to forget their future, too. That they will never do."

His cravenly pro-US policy on the Middle East misunderstood Bush's real agenda and resulted in catastrophic failure

Avi Shlaim
Monday May 14, 2007
The Guardian

"Tony Blair's opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens......

Blair's entire record in the Middle East is one of catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however, he helped to destroy the bridge......

Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter. Blair's special relationship with Bush was a one-way street: Blair made all the concessions and got nothing tangible in return......

The premise behind American policy was that Iraq was the main issue in Middle East politics and that regime change in Baghdad would weaken the Palestinians and force them to accept a settlement on Israel's terms. The road to Jerusalem, it was argued, went through Baghdad. This premise was wrong. Iraq was a non-issue; it did not pose a threat to any of its neighbours, and certainly not to America or Britain. The real issue was Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and America's support for Israel in its savage colonial war against the Palestinian people.

When seeking the approval of the Commons for the war, Blair pledged that after Iraq was disarmed, he and his American friends would seek a solution to the Palestine problem. He has utterly failed to deliver on this promise......

In return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon exacted a written American agreement to Israel's retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Blair publicly endorsed the nefarious Sharon-Bush pact. This was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour declaration of 1917......

Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century, infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to accept responsibility for the Suez debacle."

Contributed by Abed

IN DEFENSE OF SHAHA RIZA
The Washington Post

"Shaha Ali Riza has worked as an advocate for women's rights and democracy in the Middle East for most of her career, but it's her personal life -- her relationship with World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz -- that's put her in the public eye. As the scandal over the compensation Wolfowitz arranged for her deepens, one longtime colleague, leading Palestinian peace activist and philosopher Sari Nusseibeh, wrote this open letter on her behalf.......

I have known Shaha for the past 15 years, starting when she was still working for the National Endowment for Democracy. Shaha, who had heard of my work as an academic and peace activist, was interested in sounding me out on ideas for projects in the West Bank to promote democracy, empower youths and build civil society organizations.....

We kept up our contacts as I became involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and helped work with World Bank officials to draw up plans for Palestine's economic development.

Shaha later moved to the World Bank. Because of the mutual trust that had already developed between us, she soon tried to get bank officials who worked on the Middle East to get to know me......

I don't believe that the World Bank or the State Department could find a person more devoted to their work in this part of the world than Shaha. Nor, I believe, could underprivileged people from this region hope for a more sympathetic ear in Washington."

"A report by two major Israeli civil rights organizations that was issued Sunday indicates that Palestinians abandoned more than 1,000 homes and at least 1,829 businesses in the center of Hebron due to pressure by the Israel Defense Forces, the police and Jewish settlers.....

In areas of the city close to the settlers' neighborhoods, at least 1,014 residential units (41.9 percent of the total number of homes in the area) were abandoned by their residents. Of these, 659 (65 percent) were abandoned during the second intifada. In addition, 76.6 percent of the businesses were abandoned, 1,141 (62.4 percent) of them during the same period; at least 440 were closed by IDF order.

The report, which will be distributed to all MKs, claims that "the center of Hebron has become a ghost town because of an active Israeli policy" that includes preferential treatment of the settlers.

It states furthermore that the fabric of Palestinian life in Hebron has been badly damaged as a result of the severe restriction of movement imposed by the IDF on the city's Arab inhabitants, particularly since the outbreak of the second intifada. IDF policy prohibits Palestinians from walking or driving on the main streets of the city; the army also uses military orders to close Palestinian-owned business and prevents local authorities from enforcing the law against settlers who use violence against Palestinians and their property.

In addition, the organizations claim, there is a "routine of violence and harassment" on the part of the security forces against Palestinian residents. In the first three years of the intifada, curfews were imposed against those living in the center of Hebron on at least 377 days, often for days at a time, with short breaks in which those affected were allowed to stock up on provisions.

Among the violent means used by settlers against their Palestinian neighbors, the report cites physical assaults, blows, the use of sticks, rock-throwing, well-poisoning and the throwing of garbage. It refers to "methodical and often violent harassment" by settlers of Palestinians in the center of Hebron......"

By Imad Hajjaj (Abu Mahjoub)

أكد مضي تل أبيب في مشروع التطهير العرقي

وديع عواودة-الناصرة

"دعا المؤرخ الإسرائيلي المعادي للصهيونية إيلان بابه إلى إعادة النظر في مصطلح النكبة كتعريف لحرب 48 ونتائجها بالنسبة للشعب الفلسطيني. وشدد على أن الكلمة تضيق بالدلالات المروعة وبالحجم المهول للجرائم الصهيونية التي ارتكبت خلالها.

وقدم المؤرخ الإسرائيلي محاضرة حول الموضوع في مؤتمر بعنوان "النكبة في عامها الستين" نظمته جمعية ابن خلدون للثقافة والمؤسسة العربية لحقوق الإنسان في مدينة الناصرة أمس السبت، بمشاركة مجموعة من الباحثين ووزير الإعلام الفلسطيني مصطفى البرغوثي.

وأشار إيلان بابه -الذي صدر له مؤخرا كتاب "التطهير العرقي في فلسطين"- خلال المؤتمر إلى أن صورة وحقيقة النكبة تنجلي أكثر فأكثر بعد ستة عقود، ونوه إلى أنها تبدو له أشد قسوة مما قد اعتقد سابقا.

وأضاف "كمؤرخ تعجبت لاكتشافي مع الأيام فصولا مجهولة في ثنايا النكبة وأبرزها حقيقة أن القرى والمدن الفلسطينية التي دمرت ومئات الآلاف ممن هجروا وذبحوا، كانوا ضحية جريمة وأيديولوجية لا نتيجة حرب عادية".
.......
ودعا الباحث الإسرائيلي -الذي أعلن قراره بمغادرة إسرائيل مؤخرا احتجاجا على عنصريتها- إلى فهم حقيقة الجريمة التي خطط لها قبل عام 48، وإلى ضرورة مواجهة نتائجها بشكل مغاير كي يكون بالإمكان التحدث عن فرص السلام.

ولفت إلى أن الجريمة صهيونية والمجرمين الكبار هم 11 قائدا برئاسة ديفد بن غوريون خططوا خلسة وفي الغرف المظلمة للتطهير العرقي.

وأضاف "قرر أولئك بدم بارد تطهير البلاد من مليون فلسطيني في شتاء عام 48 من أجل إقامة دولة يهودية على 80% من أراضي فلسطين وبموجب الخطة أعدوا لتفريغها بالكامل من العرب".

وأِشار إيلان بابه إلى أن بقاء نحو 150 ألفا من فلسطينيي 48 كان نتيجة إدارة كفاح شجاع مقابل جيش عمل لطردهم "لكنهم صمدوا رغم هول الجريمة التي ارتكبت ضد الإنسانية وفقا للحقيقة وللقانون الدولي".

وقال "لم توقف الصهيونية وإسرائيل بقيادة حزب العمل مساعيها لاحقا وحتى اليوم لتهجير الفلسطينيين فهجرت 300 ألف فلسطيني عام 67 من ديارهم، بل حاولت تفريغ قطاع غزة ونقل سكانه إلى الضفة الغربية عام 1971، لكن حرب الاستنزاف ومشاكل داخلية حالت دون القيام بالمزيد من التطهير، ولاتزال الدولة اليهودية حتى اليوم تنهل من البئر الأيديولوجية المسممة في تعاملها مع الفلسطينيين بمن فيهم المواطنون فيها".

وأكد المؤرخ الإسرائيلي أن الصهيونية فاسدة أخلاقيا من أساسها واستهجن قبول إسرائيل ضمن الأسرة الدولية.
......."

A Very Long Article

By Nir Rosen
N Y Times Magazine

"At a meeting in mid-April in Geneva, held by António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the numbers presented confirmed what had long been suspected: the collapse of Iraq had created a refugee crisis, and that crisis was threatening to precipitate the collapse of the region. The numbers dwarfed anything that the Middle East had seen since the dislocations brought on by the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Syria, there were estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. There were another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The overall estimate for the number of Iraqis who had fled Iraq was put at two million by Guterres. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside Iraq’s borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean about 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes.......

“What I find most disturbing,” Bacon went on to say, “is that there seems to be no recognition of the problem by the president or top White House officials.” But John Bolton, who was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, and later ambassador to the United Nations, offers one explanation for this lack of recognition: it is not a crisis, and it was not triggered by American action. The refugees, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam. “Our obligation,” he told me this month at his office in the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, “was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.” Bolton likewise did not share the concerns of Bacon and others that the refugees would become impoverished and serve as a recruiting pool for militant organizations in the future.......Nor did he think American aid could alleviate potential anger: “Helping the refugees flies in the face of received logic. You don’t want to encourage the refugees to stay. You want them to go home. The governments don’t want them to stay.”......

What that has mostly meant is that the Bush administration has left the task of dealing with Iraqi refugees to Iraq’s neighbors. On a recent trip to the region, Sauerbrey pressed the Syrian government to keep its borders open. “That was a major part of my visit,” she told me. “Not only to keep borders open but not forcibly return them” — that is, the refugees. Dobriansky told me, “What we have asked for Iraq’s neighbors to do is maintain secure but open borders, allow Iraqis access to vital services and facilitate assistance.” ........"

Outgoing British PM Was On A Roll Until He Fell For George Bush’s War Policies

By Eric Margolis
The Toronto Sun

".......Yet Blair ended up as a shill for the Bush Administration’s grotesque lies about Iraq. He facilitated the Bush/Cheney war by providing Washington with credibility, diplomatic cover, and the pretence of a “coalition.”

Britain, as America’s premier historic ally, naturally felt pressure to join the war. But a true friend warns when you are about to drive over a cliff. Blair did not. Instead, he encouraged Bush and Cheney’s worst crusading instincts, validated their misconceptions and prejudices, and threw British troops into failed neo-colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By joining these wars, Blair enflamed the Muslim World against Britain and aroused violent reactions among a tiny minority of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslim citizens. In response, Blair curtailed sacrosanct British civil liberties and brought its esteemed legal system into question.

In the end, Blair had almost no influence over the Bush administration. He was derided everywhere as America’s “poodle” and a sort of Jeeves the British butler in the imperial White House. Blair’s formerly brilliant reputation was destroyed by Iraq.

A majority of Britons hated the war and resented being seen as dutiful spear-carriers for America’s nuclear knights. As Labour’s popularity plummeted, a party rebellion forced Blair to announce he would resign and make way for long-time rival, Gordon Brown.

IRAQ DEBACLE

The Iraq debacle, and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, became a curse for all politicians involved. Iraq is destroying Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party. It has ruined Blair, and may undo another Bush protege, Australia’s increasingly unpopular PM John Howard.

Afghanistan may also ruin Canada’s PM Stephen Harper, who has eagerly sought to win conservative merit badges from the Bush administration, but whose warlike undertakings go almost unnoticed in Washington.

Instead of backing away from the Iraq debacle, Blair kept insisting that his ruinous, faith-based policies were still right.

It’s tragic watching a brilliant political leader destroyed by a totally unnecessary, dishonest war. Tony Blair met his Waterloo in Iraq. Others will soon follow."

Red Carpet in Ramallah but no Clown King

Israel and the PA work together to establish 5 industrial parks to generate Palestinian employment

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – According to Israeli media sources, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are working together on plans to establish five industrial parks close to the border. The parks are expected to provide hundreds of Palestinians with jobs, said Israeli deputy defence minister, Efraim Sneh.

Haaretz reported that Sneh said that work on an industrial area in Jenin and near Tulkarem, in the West Bank, has begun.

A similar park is intended to be established near Karni crossing in the Gaza Strip and there is a contract with Japanese investors for an industrial park in Jericho......"

King Abdullah II of Jordan’s arrival in Ramallah delayed due to cloudy weather

That is the lie as the real reason is something else.....

"Ramallah – Ma'an – The office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced on Sunday that the arrival of King Abdullah II of Jordan to Ramallah, in the central West Bank, was delayed due to the cloudy weather......

Earlier, media sources told Ma'an that political reasons were behind the postponing of the visit; the king of Jordan failed to convince the Israelis to allow Palestinian Prime Minister, Isma'il Haniyeh, to come to Ramallah in order to join the meeting between Abbas and King Abdullah II. "

Also look at this:

Jordan’s Abdullah calls off flight to Ramallah Sunday for talks with Mahmoud Abbas on new plan first revealed Friday by DEBKAfile

"Amman claimed bad weather held up the visit, but two of the three royal helicopters took off and landed anyway.

The plan to link Jordan and West Bank was presented to Israel and Palestinians last week by a high-ranking Jordanian emissary, according to our Middle East sources. Amman proposed the new state framework to be established before the rise of an independent Palestinian state......"

".....according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 54 per cent of respondents think the war in Iraq is an entirely separate military action from the war on terror......

Polling Data

Do you consider the war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism which began on September 11, 2001, or do you consider it to be an entirely separate military action?

May 2007
Jan. 2007

Part of war on terrorism
43%
40%

Entirely separate action
54%
57%

Unsure
3%
4%

Do you favour or oppose the U.S. war in Iraq?

May 2007
Apr. 2007
Mar. 2007

Favour
34%
32%
32%

Oppose
65%
66%
63%

Unsure
1%
2%
4%

Do you think that the U.S. war in Iraq is lost, or don’t you think so?

Yes
41%

No
55%

Unsure "
4%

"Sir, we have put under arrest all the stones that we determined were conspiring with the resistance to frustrate the peace process"
By Hamed Najeeb

A Good Article

By Mike Whitney
uruknet.info

"I wonder what goes through Cheney’s mind when he visits Baghdad. Does he ever look out the window of his armor-plated limmo and see the wasteland he’s created---the burned out buildings, the pock-marked streets, the wretched orphans sorting through the garbage for something to eat? Al Arabiya news says that there may be as many as 100,000 orphans in Baghdad now. These are Cheney’s kids, aren’t they--the Vice President’s gift to the "New Middle East"? The next generation of terrorists?

What a horrible legacy. What a horrible man......

In his brief stay, Cheney never poked his nose beyond the 18 inch cement walls of the Green Zone. If he had, he might have seen "the hell that is Iraq". As Patrick Cockburn said in his latest article, "A Small War Guaranteed to Damage a Superpower":

"The extent of the military failure over the previous three-and-a-half years is extraordinary. The foreign media never quite made clear how little territory the U.S. and the Iraqi army fully controlled – even in the heart of Baghdad."......

Still, Cheney and Company "soldier-on" impervious to the lessons of the last 4 years and unwilling to change their basic strategy. If the definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results---then, the Vice President should be institutionalized......

Falluja was a turning point in Cheney’s war. It should be regarded as the milestone for when the war was lost. The resistance has steadily grown in strength ever since. The Iraqis now understand that there can be no negotiations with people who are willing to flatten entire cities to achieve their imperial ambitions......

Cheney’s trip coincides with a number of stories that are being suppressed in the western media. Currently, the Iraqi city of Samarra is under siege—a cordon surrounds the city, the entrances have been blocked and food, water and medical supplies have been cut off. Similar to Falluja, the media has been banned and the city’s people are left to survive as prisoners in there own country.....

In fact, the real prize for the Iraqi resistance is not Baghdad at all, but Riyadh. If fighting breaks out in Saudi Arabia, then oil futures will shoot through the roof and wreak havoc with energy supplies across the planet. It’s the quickest way to bring the industrial world to its knees---and don’t think these groups don’t know it! That’s probably why the Saudis rounded up 172 "terror suspects" without any evidence of wrongdoing just last week. The Saudis know that their widely-reviled regime is now squarely in the crosshairs of terrorist organizations.

Is this the war that Cheney wants? If so, he’s crazy!

This conflict is perfect-fit for decentralized guerilla cells that can independently carry out operations on vital pipelines, tankers and oil facilities......"

"A suicide truck bomber has crashed into the offices of a Kurdish political party, killing at least 50 people and wounding 70, including the mayor.

The attack in Makhmur on Sunday, 50km south of Arbil, badly damaged the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Colonel Abdul Qadir al Harky, the head of police in Makhmour, said there were many bodies under the rubble and he expected the death toll to rise.

"The bomb hit area with several government offices," he said.

Other security sources said a KDP local meeting was in progress at the time of the attack.

It was the second suicide attack in Kurdish areas of the north in four days.

Makhmur is just south of the autonomous Kurdish-controlled areas, but it has a substantial Kurdish population.

The blast also killed the police chief and damaged the mayor's office, officials said.

The attack occurred four days after a truck bombing in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-governing region, killed at least 15 people and wounding more than 100."

One Habila + One Habila = "Unity Government"
Celebrate!