Who Is Committed to the Security and Defense of the Palestinians?

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
Palestine Chronicle

"......The present conditions of the Palestinians are rooted in the post-Oslo agreements that left Israel in control of their lives. The agreements have already prejudiced the likely outcome because they did not treat Israel as an occupier and left the core of the issues to be considered at the final stage. Three reasons weaken the Palestinians as negotiators to day. Arab nations are too weak or unwilling to extract concessions from Israel. The Palestinians enter the final negotiations as two tribes at odds with each other rather than one people, and the negotiating tribe is beholden to Israel. And the third reason is the negotiators are the same people who proved their incompetence when they negotiated the Oslo agreements.

A new strategy is necessary to improve the chances of any semblance of success. The Palestinians have to reconcile their differences and act as one people, and Arab nations must stop the rhetoric and get serious about their support to the Palestinians. And a new negotiating team stocked with experts and facts should be assembled to deal with the complexities of negotiating with the Israelis who have been preparing to absorb most of the occupied land into Israel since 1967 and may be before. .

The Palestinians and the Arabs may think about the realist theorist Kenneth Waltz statement that “those who do not help themselves, or who do so less effectively than others, will fail to prosper, will lay themselves open to dangers, will suffer”."

Silver Platter

By Mike Luckovich

Beirut to Bosnia: Muslims and the West

Highly recommended Robert Fisk documentary

A Personal Journey by Robert Fisk of The Independent
Produced by Robert Fisk & the Discovery Channel

"Why have so many Muslims come to hate the West? In this controversial three-part series filmed in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, Egypt, and Bosnia, Robert Fisk—award-winning Middle East and Balkans correspondent for the London Independent—reports on Muslim unrest as ideology, religion, history, and geography come into conflict.

Robert Fisk travels to Lebanon to investigate why have so many Muslims came to hate the West? In doing so he introduces us to a perspective of history we rarely see."

Episode 1: The Martyr's Smile

Episode 2: The Road to Palestine

Episode 3: To The Ends of the Earth

Pressure mounts on companies involved with illegal tramway

Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 3 April 2008

"Recently the French engineering and consulting company Egis Rail joined European companies Veolia Transport and Alstom in their tramway project being built on Palestinian land in Jerusalem. Alstom won the construction bid in 2000 and two years later Veolia Transport obtained the operating rights. The tramway will connect the ring of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank with Jerusalem, for which Palestinian land is being confiscated, on top of other violations of international law.......

It is clear that the pressure on Veolia to withdraw from the tramway in East Jerusalem is building up. The effect will not be lost on the management of Veolia. The image that it meets the needs of people and sustainable development is at the heart of the company. The tramway in East Jerusalem is a hindrance to the basic need of the indigenous Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination. A key value of Veolia is supposed to be responsibility. Veolia states on its website, "We are aware of the impact our everyday actions have in improving the living conditions of people worldwide. We never forget how our business affects our employees and society as a whole and base our actions on our understanding of the general public interest." Being Israel's partner in crime, however, reveals a completely different image of Veolia."

This 'bombshell' took a year falling

A Good Article
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, The Electronic Intifada, 2 April 2008

"CAIRO, 2 April (IPS) - A recent article in Vanity Fair magazine "exposing" a US-planned coup attempt against Palestinian resistance movement Hamas last year has ignited a storm of debate about Washington's Middle East policies. Yet for more than nine months, details of the plot were reported in the independent Arabic press -- and elsewhere -- leading some observers to ask: where was the mainstream media?

"From the very beginning, Hamas has publicly insisted that what happened in Gaza last year came in reaction to plans being hatched against it," Tarek Abd al-Gaber, former news correspondent for Egyptian state television covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, told IPS.

Hamas has been widely blamed in much of the mainstream media for carrying out a "violent coup" against the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip last summer. After six days of heavy fighting, Hamas wrested control of the territory from the government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the US-backed Fatah movement, in mid-June.......

Most western capitals, led by Washington, quickly condemned the takeover, placing blame for the dangerous turn of events squarely on Hamas. The refrain was taken up by much of the western media, which consistently portrayed the dispute as one between "extremist" Hamas in the Gaza Strip and "moderate" Fatah in the West Bank.

Many Arab capitals, too, denounced Hamas's seizure of the volatile territory. The day after the upset, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was quoted in the state press as describing what happened as "the overthrow of Palestinian legitimacy."......

Yet in its April issue, the US leisure magazine Vanity Fair makes a startling claim: that Hamas's takeover of the territory was prompted by a secret US plan aimed at extirpating the Islamist group's leadership in Gaza.

In an article entitled "The Gaza Bombshell," the magazine purports to "lay bare a covert initiative" approved by the White House and implemented by the US State Department "to provoke a Palestinian civil war."

Relying on confidential documents and former administration officials, author David Rose writes that after Hamas's unexpected victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, the US administration drew up a plan to arm Fatah cadres with the aim of forcefully removing Hamas from power in Gaza. Under the terms of the arrangement, Rose writes, Fatah received arms and financing through a handful of Washington's Arab allies, including Egypt and Jordan........

Instead of driving the Islamist group from power, Vanity Fair writes, "US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza."

White House and State Department officials have strenuously denied the article's claims. Nevertheless, the Gaza "bombshell" has received wide coverage in the western news media, with several commentators comparing the magazine's "revelations" to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, which also involved the covert -- and illegal -- supply of arms to the Middle East.

Yet according to many local observers, the existence of the so-called "Dayton Plan" has been fairly well known since the upset in Gaza more than nine months ago.

"Hamas has consistently and publicly stated that what happened in June came in reaction to the Dayton Plan, which aimed at the group's destruction," said Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of independent daily al-Dustour, which published Hamas's allegations last summer.......

Abd al-Gaber agreed that Egyptian state media wholly neglected to convey Hamas's point of view regarding the reasons for the Gaza seizure.

"The official press took the US line and simply blamed Hamas for everything," he said. "The White House insisted on calling Hamas's actions a 'coup' regardless of the circumstances, and official media -- in the west and in the Arab world -- repeated this mantra.".......

According to Eissa, Egypt's official press has yet to mention the contentious Vanity Fair report.

"Even now, the state press hasn't reported on the Vanity Fair story," he said, noting that al-Dustour, by contrast, had published translated selections from the article in the first week of March.

Eissa added: "Like much of the western media, the official Arab press would rather ignore Hamas than publish stories that might serve to justify the resistance group's actions.""

Taliban welcome back an old friend

By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times

"The release of a video featuring legendary Afghan mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom many believed dead since he disappeared from the public eye several years ago, is a major boost for the Taliban. Not only does Haqqani pledge his considerable support for the Taliban, his return to the scene will galvanize Pashtun tribal leaders and serve as a unifying force for the Taliban-led resistance.

KARACHI - Like a voice from the grave, legendary Afghan mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani has emerged from years of silence to boldly launch the Taliban-led spring offensive in Afghanistan, at the same time burying any doubts of a split between his coalition of resistance groups and Mullah Omar's Taliban.

In a video message released last week and which is only now coming into wider circulation, Haqqani, speaking in his trademark low-pitched voice and with his hair dyed red with henna, called on the people of Afghanistan "to stand up against the US-led forces in Afghanistan and drive them out".

The release of the message by Haqqani, who has a bounty on his head as one of the US's most-wanted men, coincides with an important North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Bucharest, Romania, this weekend at which the divided alliance will try to hammer out a more coherent strategy in the war in Afghanistan which many analysts believe it is losing........"

The other Iraqi civil war

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"Even by George W Bush logic, "the terrorists" and Iran won the battle of Basra. In the north of Iraq, though, the pieces are falling into place for an alliance between the United States, Israel and a "greater Kurdistan". If only the pesky Iraqi nationalist Sunnis and Shi'ites don't get in the way.

......The battle for Kirkuk and Mosul holds its own riddle; its outcome will determine how a knocked out Iraq will eventually perish, partitioned among Sunni Arabs, Shi'ites and Kurds.

Who will profit from it? Ayman el-Amir, writing last year in Egypt's al-Ahram Weekly, has come to as good a conclusion as any. The winner, according to him, will be Israel. Low-intensity civil war is already on - in fact multiplying itself into Shi'ite-Shi'ite civil war, such as in Basra, or Sunni Arab-Kurdish civil war, such as the battle for Kirkuk and Mosul.

Israel would like nothing better than a proxy war in Iraq pitting Iran and its Arab allies against Sunni Arab US allies. Meanwhile, writes al-Amir, "Israel would build a political-military-economic alliance with a semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government, with oil wealth that would be considerably enhanced by the prospect of taking over Arab Kirkuk and Mosul." Israeli interests - not to mention strategic intelligence - are already deeply entrenched in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders have already demonstrated an extraordinary mobility to always strike deals with the best-positioned bidder - or with any player capable of advancing the utmost Kurdish dream, independence. As for a US-Israeli-greater Kurdistan alliance, that may still be Washington's way to achieve its own dream of a new, greater Middle East. If those pesky, enraged, realist, Iraqi nationalist Sunnis and Shi'ites don't get in the way. "

World views US 'more positively'

"....The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.

Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.

The poll, part of a regular survey of world opinion, interviewed more than 17,000 people in 34 countries.

The survey period was the three months up to the end of January 2008.

However, the poll finds that views of US influence in the world are still mainly negative, though they improved in 11 out of the 23 countries also polled a year ago.

Perceptions of the US worsened in three - Canada, Lebanon and Egypt......

Most negative

Of other countries rated, Iran and Israel are viewed most negatively.

Negative views of Iran's influence remained at 54%. But Israel's negative rating went down from 57% to 52%......."

Syria said calling up reserve soldiers, fearing Israeli attack

"Syria's military has called up part of its reserve troops over fears of an Israel Defense Forces offensive, the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday.

The report quoted senior officials in Damascus as saying the Syrian army has heightened its alert over fears of an offensive by a neighboring country and is conducting large-scale military exercises.

Al-Quds al-Arabi also reported that Syria is closely following Israeli military activity along the Syrian border, and that Damascus is operating under the assumption that Israel is laying the groundwork for war with Syria.

In recent weeks, several media sources have reported that the Syrian army has deployed armored divisions and infantry units near Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

According to Al-Quds al-Arabi, Syrian military intelligence estimates that Israeli forces will attempt to infiltrate from the Bekaa Valley area, regarded as a 'soft spot' on the border.

Last week, London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat reported that the Syrian army was calling up reserve units......"

Manufacturing Consent to Attack Syria: Israel orders bio/chemical warfare masks redistributed, Damascus raises war alarm

"Israel’s security cabinet convened Wednesday, April 2, to examine the homeland’s preparedness for war. It decided to redistribute the bio/chemical warfare masks a few months after they were called in. DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose intelligence data indicating the possibility that Syria may transfer to Hizballah chemical or biological warheads known to have been developed for its war arsenal.

A few hours earlier, the London-based al Quds al-Arabi quoted Damascus officials as claiming that Israel is preparing a big attack on Syria and Hizballah. Syria was said to have ordered a partial call-up of its military reserves. The paper also reported that Hizballah had decided to postpone for the moment its plan to wreak its revenge on Israel for allegedly killing Imad Mughniyeh last month, so as not to provide Israel with a pretext for going to war against Syria and itself.

DEBKAfile reports too that last week, Damascus deployed two armored brigades on the Beirut-Damascus highway under the command of President Bashar Assad’s young brother Maher Assad, chief of the presidential guard. They were posted there to block the road in case Israeli armored columns attempted to reach Damascus through Lebanon......"

The End of Empire?

by Howard Zinn and Tom Engelhardt

"......We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this "influence" is benign, that the "purposes" – whether in Luce's formulation or more recent ones – are noble, that this is an "imperialism lite." As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: "Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time." The New York Times called that speech "striking for its idealism."

The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project – Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used "her Navy and her Army … as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression." And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: "The values you learned here … will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world."

For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes – in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.

Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense – that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization – begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity? "

NATO Marches Eastward

We're on a dangerous collision course with Russia, no matter who wins the White House

By Justin Raimondo



"The relentless march of NATO, decades after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the death knell of the Leninist project, is surely an object lesson in the real motivations and character of "democratic" imperialism, here and in Europe. The Communist enemy may be long gone, but NATO soldiers ever onward, and ever eastward. Suddenly we're back in the heyday of the Cold War: once again we hear the War Party's clarion call – "The Russians are coming!"

What they really mean to say however – as the video clip above makes visibly and audibly clear – is that the Americans are coming, along with the Brits, actively seeking to delegitimize and destabilize the government still dominated by Vladimir Putin. A new campaign for "regime change" is in the making, this time aimed at Moscow........"

Bad foundations

By Seth Freedman
The Guardian

"Peace Now's latest report into settlement activity gives the lie to the Israeli government's Annapolis promises to freeze all settlement construction - and the facts speak for themselves. Their report highlights over 100 instances of building on settlements taking place since December, prompting the group to declare the settlement freeze as "dead".

Critics of the Palestinians love to paint those on the other side of the security wall as untrustworthy and impossible to make peace with, yet it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The Israeli government signs interim deals with one hand while frantically digging foundations for more settlement homes with the other, and Peace Now's expose drives yet another nail into the Annapolis coffin."

The royal road to Qom

Moqtada al-Sadr's closeness with Iran means one unexpected consequence of the US-led invasion is a geopolitical boost for the Islamic Republic

By Mark Cist
(a photographer and journalist based in Tehran, Iran)
The Guardian

"......Sadr, like so many millions of Iraqis, detests the US-backed government of Nouri al-Maliki, and he coordinates his many followers while training to be an ayatollah. These things are important in the new Iraq. The man with the most say, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, doesn't much like the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. Sistani regards him as lower down the Shia ranking. For Christians it's best to think of the Catholic church and rivalry between cardinals and not a little bit of Father Ted mixed in with Scarface.

The power of Moqtada al-Sadr stems from Saddam Hussein's destruction of the Iraqi Communist party, one of the largest in the Middle East. Sadr's father Sadiq al-Sadr came to be in charge of a brand of Islamism that rapidly captured the imagination of the slums of what is now Sadr City, just outside Baghdad. Communists, just like the leftwing Fatah in Gaza, got corrupted, and for the poor in Iraq's urban centres, Islamism was the more attractive revolutionary cause.

Sadiq al-Sadr was killed in 1999 and his son was catapulted into the centre of things by the idiotic US invasion of Iraq, the event that makes Iranian officials feel that oil-supply domination and a big joke at the expense of Arabs around the Gulf is just within reach. Last weekend the thirtysomething Sadr and not the patrician Sistani held all the cards.......

But the worst of it and what allowed Maliki's people to come and beg forgiveness in Iran was the elephant in the room. We don't know whether Sadr ordered it but attacks on one of the two main export pipelines near Basra reduced the country's oil exports by a third. The kickbacks alone would have had every corrupt Iraqi official genuflecting to Qom for some order. The use of British and American airpower - Britain's Major Tom Holloway sickeningly called it "incidences of weapons release" - against Sadr's forces predictably failed. The CIA talks to Sistani or his perceived proxy, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, while Sadr trains to be the next leader of Iraq.

Washington is less on Sadr's mind than Sistani's Badr organisation and unifying the country under a new national entity he foresees as being formed through a better revolution than Khomeini's in 1979. As of today, he is in Tehran, along with the families of Mughniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbollah. Iran and Syria have very shaky relations but in them is the background to the coming civil war in Iraq. Maliki was in exile in Damascus while Sadr's people were in Tehran when Rumsfeld was selling WMD to Saddam Hussein. Washington would do better to investigate the explosive headrest of a Pajero parked in Damascus than talk to anyone else saying they know all about how to solve the problem of Iraq, scene of the largest emigration in human history and the shattering of so many millions of lives.

Back in the 16th century, the Persian Safavid dynasty built Qom as a rival to Mecca for pilgrimage - Washington has done it all over again."

We're Here Because We're Here

By Steve Bell, The Guardian

NEWS UPDATE

You will be pleased and re-assured to know that kissing-ass-Abbas is still "negotiating!" Celebrate NOW!
(Cartoon by Ben Heine)

Returning to Nablus: Collateral damage

Alice Rothchild writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 2 April 2008

"Since 2003, a health and human rights project developed by members of Jewish Voice for Peace has organized yearly delegations to Israel and Palestine, joining with partners such as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and Palestinian Medical Relief Society. We document conditions on the ground, bring our stories home, and work on moving the political conversation towards a change in US policy. We focus on issues related to the occupation, its impact on the civilian populations, and the consequences of Israeli incursions, restrictions of movement, and collective punishment. In mid-October 2007 our delegation visited an apartment in Nablus that was the site of an attack by Israeli soldiers days earlier. While we were aware that there are almost nightly Israeli incursions into Nablus, the reality was still jarring and painfully surreal.......

For me, there is so much that is truly obscene in this description, both in its particulars and as an example of daily occurrences in the occupied territories. Israelis have a right to demand security, but I wonder what is happening in the mind of an Israeli soldier when he threatens to shoot an unarmed Palestinian man clutching his wife and child in his own home, or uses another as a human shield to move from apartment to apartment, or shoots an elderly man in the doorway of his apartment? How do repeated acts of collective punishment and humiliating and terrorizing civilians possibly contribute to Israeli security? Think of the tens of thousands of Fedaas whose lives are constricted and traumatized by these experiences. Think of the children who have never met an Israeli who did not carry a gun. Look at what we know and what we choose not to see. Consider our media, where the suffering of the innocents in the Israeli town of Sderot periodically bombarded by homemade rockets from Gaza, is squarely in the public eye, while the innocents in the city of Nablus under frequent attack by a heavily-armed military, stand invisible and unheard.

Alice Rothchild is an author and co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston. This article is an excerpt from an updated version of her book, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience to be republished in 2009."

Real News Video: Who won the battle of Basra?

"Pepe Escobar: Iran is sufficiently powerful to broker a ceasefire deal

Tuesday April 1st, 2008

Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Pepe Escobar writes The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online. He has reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He is the author of the recently published Red Zone Blues. Pepe is a regular analyst for The Real News Network."

Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll

This poll is similar to our poll, on Palestinian Pundit, which we had since late last year. The question is:

Do you see the possibility of achieving comprehensive peace between the Palestinians and Israelis by the end of 2008?

With about 10,000 responding so far, 97% said no.

"The game is up"

From Missing Links

"Nahid Hattar, one of the prominent Jordanian opposition journalists, lays out the argument for what perhaps a lot of people instinctively grasp, namely that the events of the past week, even though they laid bare an intra-Shiite split, that split is actually a very positive thing. In fact these events, including what he calls the uprising of the Shiite masses of the South and Center of Iraq, mark the beginning of the end of the American occupation and potentially the start of a non-sectarian approach to Iraqi reconstruction. His main points:

(1) What happened in the South and Center of Iraq in the recent period of time represented the alienation of the main part of the Iraqi Shiite masses from the political/occupation process, changing instead to a violent clash with it, politically and in military terms. This in itself is an important turning point in the development of the Iraqi resistance, because the whole American defense of their project in Iraq rests on some inscrutable but assumed support of the Shiite majority, which, it is now clear, has gone over to the side of resistance and opposition......

Forthly, says Nahid Hattar, it is clear that the Americans requested Iran to intervene militarily in the recent fighting, in the interests of the Maliki government (presumably referring to the habitual American requests to help fight the "terrorists"), and Iran declined to to so. So from this point on, he says, it's no good for any nationalist Arab to interpret the Iranian attitude as "murky" or "ambiguous" or to resort to explanations of that type, which don't stand up to the facts of the recent events. What he means is that if Iran had wanted to prop up a sectarian pro-Iranian government, this was its occasion to do so, and it clearly declined.

The writer concludes with a list of things Arab movements and Arab regimes should do to take advantage of this turn of events: (1) Opening up to the forces and the people representing this Shiite nationalism and supporting them; (2) new reconciliation initiatives, not between participants in the existing political process, but rather in the interests of unifying the national-unity and Arabist forces across Sunni and Shiite lines; (3) refusal to consent to Iranian influence in Iraq; (4) refraining from any kind of taassub (gang- or party-formation) or sectarianism; (5) reflecting on the experience of the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the forces connected with it, as something past, and studying together with Iraqis in an Arab framework, a modern Iraqi form for the new nation, for the period after the occupation, which is collapsing; (6) rejecting Kurdish separatism or any other kind of separatism.

Finally, he writes:

The uprising (intifada) of the Iraqi Shiites against the occupation and its cooperators is a sure sign that the hour of the defeat of the American project in Iraq is approaching. So perhaps it is already time for those who have wagered on the success of this project or on an Iranian success as its inheritor, to be warned that the game is up, because a free, unified, Arab and strong Iraq will be back. It is both in our interests and our duty to hasten the day of that return."

دعوه لخيانة العراق

(Click on image to enlarge)

"دعوة للشباب الفلسطيني لبناء السجون في العراق
دعوة للشباب الفلسطيني لترك أنقاض مخيمات غزة و لبناء مخيمات الجنود الأمريكان
يتشرف مركز التجارة الفلسطيني و تحت رعاية وزير الاقتصاد الفلسطيني كمال حسونه "العضو الراسب في قائمة مصطفى البرغوثي" لحضور معرض اعادة اعمار العراق
يشتمل المعرض على جائزة أبو غريب لأفضل تصميم لسجن في العراق
و جائزة صدام حسين لبناء أفض لقصر للأمريكان في العراق

الدعوة عامة و يمنع أصطحاب المتفجرات "

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra

The three reasons the Iraqi prime minister launched his ill-fated assault on the Sadrists of southern Iraq.

By Juan Cole
Salon.com

"......The survival of the current Iraqi government, based on rivals to the Sadrists such as ISCI and the Da'wa Party of al-Maliki, hangs in the balance. Clearly, al-Maliki felt that the operation had to be launched, and may well have thought that it is better to do it now, so that it will not be fresh in the minds of the Iraqi or American electorate when they go to the polls in the fall. Now that al-Maliki's campaign has gone so badly, it raises the question of whether there will be a sympathy vote for al-Sadr in October. The Iraqis, a majority of whom say they want a short timetable for U.S. withdrawal, may well have an opportunity to elect provincial governments that, practically speaking, want the same thing, in October. If that happens, it is hard to see how the U.S. presence can last, since the U.S. needs bases in Shiite provinces like Baghdad so as to function. "

Ilan Pappe: The Israeli historian some don't want you to hear

"Dr. Ilan Pappe, whose parents fled Nazi Germany, received his doctorate at Oxford University and was Senior Lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University in Israel, Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva, and Chair of the Emil Tourma Institute.

He is currently Chair of the Department of History at the University of Exeter and Co-Director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappe has just completed a cross-Canada tour on the topic of his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Am Johal interviewed him in Vancouver for rabble.ca.......

Johal: As someone who travels to different places in the West, the debate around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is mediated differently in parts of Europe, Canada and the U.S. What is your view of how the conflict is disseminated in different places and the diversity of the public sphere?

Pappe: I think there are differences. In the U.S. and Canada, for the purpose of this question, there is no real debate in the mainstream media. I think there is a stifling affect that happens. Whenever someone tries to enlarge the scope of the debate, the existing mechanisms don't allow it.

In Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, Italy, parts of France, different opinions can be heard. Germany is not that different from the U.S., Canada or Austria. The new members of the European Union in Eastern Europe are even worse. I'm amazed. I didn't expect to see such a difference. The variety of views, the lack of pluralism.

Even Jimmy Carter said that there is a difference in terms of how things are talked about in Israel and outside of it.

If you compare the U.S. to Canada, or to Israel, there are differences in the limitations of the discussion. The difference is that in Israel, it is done by self-censorship. People are very confident in their own truisms, their own moral high ground.

This is the function of years and years of indoctrination. We have some changes in the civil society. Here, in Canada, people are timid. They are afraid to say what their human instinct tells them they should say. It is an intimidating situation to speak out........."

Please Don't Feed The Jailed Population: Egyptian authorities block 40 European MPs from reaching Rafah

"ARISH, (PIC)-- The Egyptian authorities barred Monday evening 40 European MPs from the European campaign to end the siege on Gaza from reaching Rafah to express their solidarity with the besieged Gaza people.

An Egyptian officer told the European delegates after arriving in the Arish city in northern Sinai that he received orders to prevent them from continuing their way to Rafah.

The spokesman for the European campaign expressed the MPs' dismay at the arbitrary measure practiced against them by Egypt.

The European MPs brought with them medical and food assistance for the Gaza people to alleviate some of their daily suffering.

The European delegation is expected to hold a press conference explaining the hardships it faced in trying to reach Rafah."

Another Arab Tea Party Ends

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

"CAIRO, Apr 1 (IPS) - The 20th Arab League summit, convened earlier this week in the Syrian capital Damascus, drew relatively few heads of state, with both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz choosing to stay at home. According to local commentators, the low level of diplomatic representation served to show up Syria's isolation within the otherwise U.S.-dominated Arab fold.

"Cairo and Riyadh -- two main agents of U.S. policy in the region -- sent very low-level delegates with the aim of further isolating Damascus," Abdel-Halim Kandil, former editor-in-chief of opposition weekly al-Karama, told IPS......

But local commentators say the event yielded little in the way of tangible results.

"The summit was nothing more than a formal tea party, lacking any serious discussion," said Kandil. "Regardless of the relative levels of participation, this summit -- like all AL summits within the last ten years -- was of little practical value."

He went on to note that Egypt's relations with Syria -- whatever the outcome in Lebanon -- would continue to be dictated by decision-makers in Washington.

"When it comes to Syria, Cairo will carry on following U.S. policy," Kandil said. "So any improvement in Egypt-Syria relations will depend on Washington's own relations with Damascus." "

Hamas leader says Israel is exaggerating militant group's strength to justify assaults

"DAMASCUS, Syria: The exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, has said that Israel exaggerates the Palestinian militant group's military strength, accusing the Jewish state of seeking to spark a war against Hamas and the Lebanese guerrilla force Hezbollah.

Israel launched a military offensive against the Gaza Strip in early March, seeking to quash Hamas militants firing rockets at Israel towns. More than 100 Palestinians were killed before Israel ended the assault and Egypt began trying to mediate a "tahdiya" or calm between Hamas and Israel.

"Hamas' military capacity is humble, but the enemy is exaggerating it in an attempt to justify its aggression and justify more aggression and more brutality," Mashaal told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday at his office in Damascus.

"Our weapons are humble but we have great will. This is what makes our action effective," he said......."

This is What The Palestinians Desperately Need: Not Freedom, Not End of Israeli Occupation, Not Return of Refugees, Not End of Apartheid.

No, They Need Modern Prisons, a Lot More "Security Forces" and More Effective Crackdowns!

Thank You EU; What Could Oppressed Palestinians Do Without You! Please Send a Few More Billion Euros to Abbas, Dahlan and the Rest of the Jailers and the Thugs.

Palestinian police, prisons lack basic equipment

"(Reuters) - Prisons in the occupied West Bank are overcrowded, need renovation and, in most cases, are unfit to serve as jails, a European Union assessment found in February.

A separate EU audit completed in November 2007 found that the Palestinian civil police in the West Bank face an acute shortage of equipment.

Here are some facts about the police and the prisons......."

Disunity in Damascus

As good old Muammar Gadafy pointed out, the Arab summit in Damascus laid bare crippling divisions over Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq

By Ian Black
The Guardian

"Muammar Gadafy is usually good for a laugh, and he raised some thin - if strained - smiles at the weekend's Arab summit in Damascus when he took his fellow leaders to task for wasting his time and theirs. Talk of unity, complained Libya's irrepressibly candid "brother leader", was nonsense when Arab states spent their time plotting against each other, achieving nothing and standing idly by when one of their number (Saddam Hussein) was toppled by foreign armies.......

Summits are often boring and of little relevance to ordinary people outside the charmed circle of leaders, security and media. European Union summits invariably feel like that - though the achievements of the EU are enormous compared to the paltry results of Arab integration since the league was established in 1945.

"The summit in Damascus will constitute a transformation in the history of inter-Arab relations," wrote the analyst Adel Malek in the pan-Arab al-Hayat daily. "It will either trigger an awakening that would save what remains of Arab solidarity or consecrate the near total collapse of the Arab system." Life rarely offers such clear-cut choices - but no prizes for guessing which of these two outcomes is nearer the dismal truth."

Al-Jazeera Video: Riz Khan - Iraq's Shia power struggle - 31 Mar 08

A Good interview featuring Patrick Cockburn and Raed Jarrar.

Part 1



Part 2

Embarrassed U.S. Starts to Disown Basra Operation

By Gareth Porter

"WASHINGTON, Mar 31 (IPS) - As it became clear last week that the "Operation Knights Assault" in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington......

Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military operation. It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding back because they were still in the process of retraining and reorganisation, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had lost control of the Mahdi Army.....

These suggestions that it was al-Maliki who miscalculated in Basra are clearly false. No significant Iraqi military action can be planned without a range of military support functions being undertaken by the U.S. command......

Then came Sadr's announcement Feb. 22 that the ceasefire would be extended. That apparently convinced Petraeus and the Bush White House that they could now launch a large-scale "cordon and search" operation against the Mahdi Army in Basra without great risk of a military response.

That assumption ignored the evidence that Sadr had been avoiding major combat because he was in the process of reorganising and rebuilding the Mahdi Army into a more effective force. Thousands of Mahdi Army fighters, including top commanders, were sent to Iran for training -- not as "rogue element", as suggested by the U.S. command, but with Sadr's full support. One veteran Mahdi Army fighter who had undergone such training told The Independent last April that the retraining was "part of a new strategy. We know we are against a strong enemy and we must learn proper methods and techniques.".......

The ability of Mahdi Army units in Basra to stop in its tracks the biggest operation mounted against it since 2004 suggests that Shiite military resistance to the occupation is only beginning. By making that point just before Petraeus's testimony, Sadr has posed a major challenge to the Bush narrative of military success in Iraq."

Saudi Normalization With Israel in Full Swing!

يديعوت : مفتي السعودية يدعو حاخامات اسرائيليين للمشاركة بمؤتمر الحوار بين الاديان بالرياض

"تل ابيب ـ يو بي آي: قالت صحيفة يديعوت أحرونوت امس الاثنين ان مفتي السعودية عبد العزيز آل الشيخ اتصل بمكاتب جمعية الصداقة بين اسرائيل والعرب داعياً حاخامات اسرائيليين الي حضور مؤتمر الحوار بين الاديان السماوية المزمع عقده في الرياض.
ونقلت يديعوت أحرونوت عن يسرائيل عفروني، ممثل جمعية الصداقة بين اسرائيل والعرب قوله ان آل الشيخ دعانا الي لقاء لرجال دين سينعقد في السعودية وأوضح لنا الترتيبات .
وأضاف عفروني لقد اتفقنا أن يتم عقد اللقاء بعد الفصح (اليهودي) وبعد ان نبلور مجموعة بالتنسيق مع وزارة الخارجية في اسرائيل .
ولم يحدد علي وجه الدقة موعد المؤتمر المزمع.
وتابع عفروني أن السعودية ستصادق علي دخول الوفد الإسرائيلي بواسطة جواز سفر مؤقت سنحصل عليه في الأردن لايام المؤتمر فقط وليس بواسطة جواز سفر اسرائيلي .
وقالت يديعوت أحرونوت انه في الأيام القريبة المقبلة سيتم عرض الدعوة السعودية أمام الحاخام الرئيسي لإسرائيل شلومو عمار وحاخامات من المستوطنات في الضفة الغربية ليشكلوا بدورهم الوفد الإسرائيلي للمؤتمر في الرياض.
وينتظر عضو الكنيست الحاخام ميخائيل ملكيور من كتلة حزب العمل وحركة ميماد دعوته لحضور المؤتمر في السعودية، وقال إنه تمت دعوته الي القصر السعودي قبل سنة ونصف السنة علي أثر نشاطه لتسوية العلاقات بين الأديان لكن الشرط كان أن يدخل الي المملكة بجواز سفر أجنبي وليس اسرائيليا. وأوضح ملكيور أنه في حينه لم يكن بحوزتي جواز سفر أجنبي وأتوقع بسرور دعوتي لمبادرة الملك السعودي عبد الله بن عبد العزيز آل سعود."

Iranian General Played Key Role in Brokering Iraq Cease-Fire

by Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers

"BAGHDAD - Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.......

The backdrop to Sadr’s dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers to Qom, Iran’s holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.

There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said.

Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s Dawa party, and Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq.

“The statement issued today by (Muqtada al Sadr) is a result of the meetings,” said Jalal al-Din al Saghir, a leading member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. “The government didn’t have any disagreement with the Sadrists when it went to the city of Basra. The Sadrist movement is the one that chose to face the government.”

“We asked Iranian officials to help us persuade him that we were not cracking down on the Sadr group,” said an Iraqi official, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject......."

The Lessons of Basra

by Robert Dreyfuss
The Nation

".....But it’s far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And US air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive US training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren’t even able to take control of Iraq’s second-largest city.

Adding to Bush’s utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr’s representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a “terrorist” entity by the US government. So President Bush’s “defining moment” is this: the head of an Iranian “terrorist” force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr’s movement and ISCI."

A Third American War in the Making?

Iran in the Crosshairs

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"......Just as the world could not believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran's only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East."

Real News Video: Iraq ruling elite needs US troops to stay in power

"Sabah al Nasseri: Gov. attack on Sadr movement meant to prevent their election victory

Monday March 31st, 2008

Professor Nasseri (a Basra native) discusses the situation with Peppe Escobar."

Contributed by Fatima


The Rape of The Arab Regimes' Perpetual "Peace Initiative"
By Imad Hajjaj

The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2008

".....Since his early political life in Chicago, Barack Obama was well-informed about the Middle East and had expressed nuanced views conveying an understanding that justice and fairness, not blinkered support for Israel, are the keys to peace and the right way to combat extremism. Yet for months he has been fighting the charge that he is less rabidly pro-Israel than other candidates -- which means now adhering to the same simplistic formulas and unconditional support for Israeli policies that have helped to escalate conflict and worsen America's standing in the Middle East. Hence Obama's assertion at his 26 February debate with Senator Hillary Clinton that he is "a stalwart friend of Israel.".......

Obama implicitly admitted that Wright's views were rooted in opposition to Israel's deep ties to apartheid South Africa, and thus entirely reasonable even if Obama himself did "not necessarily," as he put it, share them. Israel supplied South Africa with hundreds of millions of dollars of weaponry despite an international embargo. Even the water cannons that South African forces used to attack anti-apartheid demonstrators in the townships were manufactured at Kibbutz Beit Alfa, a "socialist" settlement in northern Israel. Until the late 1980s, South Africa often relied on Israel to lobby Western governments not to impose sanctions.

And the relationship was durable. As The Washington Post reported in 1987, "When it comes to Israel and South Africa, breaking up is hard to do." Israeli officials, the newspaper said, "face conflicting imperatives: their desire to get in line with the West, which has adopted a policy of mild but symbolic sanctions, versus Israel's longstanding friendship with the Pretoria government, a relationship that has been important for strategic, economic and, at times, sentimental reasons" ("An Israeli Dilemma: S. African Ties; Moves to Cut Links Are Slowed by Economic Pressures, Sentiment," The Washington Post, 20 September 1987)........"

Palestinian orgs: Israel's anniversary nothing to celebrate

Appeal, Various undersigned, 31 March 2008

"How can you celebrate? The establishment of the state of Israel 60 years ago was a settler-colonial project that systematically and violently uprooted more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their lands and homes. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias and gangs ransacked Palestinian properties and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages. How can people of conscience celebrate this catastrophe?

Israel at 60 is a state that continues to deny Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes and receive compensation, simply because they are "non-Jews." It still illegally occupies Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It persists in its blatant denial of fundamental Palestinian human rights, in contravention of international humanitarian law and human rights conventions. It still subjects its own Palestinian citizens to a system of institutionalized discrimination, strongly reminiscent of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. And Israel gets away with all this, thanks to the unprecedented immunity granted to it by the unlimited and munificent US and European economic, diplomatic, political, and academic support.

In view of this multi-faceted oppression that is the reality of Israel today, we regard any Arab or international participation, whether individual or institutional, in any activity that contributes, either directly or indirectly, to the "celebrations" of Israel's establishment, as collusion in the perpetuation of the dispossession and uprooting of refugees, the prolongation of the occupation, and the deepening of Israeli apartheid. Inviting Israel as a "guest of honor" to the Turin and Paris book fairs, for example, is not only a deliberate betrayal of basic principles of human rights, including those enshrined in the laws of the European Union itself, but is also a deliberate attempt to cover up Israel's crimes against the Arab people, especially its successive war crimes in Lebanon and Palestine, and its acts of slow genocide against a million and a half Palestinians in the besieged and collectively punished Gaza Strip. In short, celebrating "Israel at 60" is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves......."

Crossing the Line interviews journalist Jonathan Cook

Podcast, The Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2008

"This week on Crossing the Line: According to much of the international media, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai was apparently "misunderstood" when he said that Gaza faced a "shoah," the Hebrew word for "holocaust." But was his comment really misunderstood? Host Naji Ali speaks with Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook about Vilnai's remarks and the Israeli government's longer-term strategy for Palestinians in the occupied territories.......

Crossing the Line's host, Naji Ali, is an independent journalist currently living in San Francisco. Ali's South African roots and desire for social change are the reason for his strong solidarity with the Palestinian people. In 1990 Ali was arrested in South Africa where he was detained and tortured for nearly two years by the South African secret police. Ali also lived and worked in the Old City of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

*Naji Ali was formerly known as Christopher Brown."

Click Here to Listen

Land Day protest at LEVIEV New York: 60 Years of Nakbah

By NY -- ADALAH

"New York, NY, March 29, 2008 - Saturday's Land Day protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire and settlement mogul Lev Leviev highlights the sixty-year Israeli campaign to displace Palestinians from their land, and Palestinian defiance and resistance - from the Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when around 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their villages by Israeli forces to become refugees; to the original Land Day protests in 1976; to present day settlement construction by Israeli settlement builders like Lev Leviev in Bil'in, Jayyous, Jabal Abu Ghneim and Maale Adumim.

The first Land Day protests were held on March 30, 1976. Israel's Ministry of Finance confiscated 5000 acres of Palestinian land between the Palestinian villages of Sakhnin and Arraba in the Galilee in northern Israel. Construction of eight Jewish industrial villages was planned on the seized land. On March 30, 1976, Palestinian towns from the Negev to the Galilee launched a day of nonviolent protests and strikes in solidarity with Sakhnin and Arraba. Six Palestinian civilians were killed and over 100 Palestinians injured by the Israeli military and police as they violently repressed the protests. Palestinians have held Land Day protests every year since 1976, on and around March 30th.......

60 years after the Nakbah, and 32 years after the original Land Day, Israeli land seizure and repression continue in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and inside Israel, as does Palestinian resistance. The testimonies below - from refugees from the Nakbah in 1948, from Land Day protests in 1976 and from present day Bil'in and Jayyous where Leviev's companies are building settlements - demonstrate the continuity of both Israeli repression and Palestinian steadfastness and resistance that Palestinian communities in Israel, in the Occupied Territories and living in exile as refugees around the world are commemorating at protests this Land Day......"

No War: The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself

By Tariq Ali

"What has happened to the movement against the war that exploded in 2003, mobilizing millions of people in the entire West, to the point that the New York Times called it "the second superpower"?

The fact is that it never was, in the true and proper sense of the word, a movement -- only a day of paroxysm, a spontaneous and desperate attempt of citizens of all political persuasions to stop the war.

It was conceived, if you will, as a preventive blow against a war that people instinctively knew was based on a heap of lies. The day when the war really began, antiwar mobilizations began to die. Citizens, demoralized by their own failure, could no longer find the strength to take to the streets in great numbers......

.....a majority of the North American and European citizens are still in favor of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq: however, their voices are not being heard by the political establishment. There is a growing crisis of political representation in the West. Democracy is becoming hollow......

In the end, the fact that there is no draft in the US means that most Americans are not directly affected by the war. Military families opposed to the war constitute the only important pressure group. As a substitute for the draft, the US has recruited mercenaries from all over the world......."

Peace Now: Settlement construction increased since Annapolis

Group publishes report claiming Israeli construction in West Bank, east Jerusalem continues in full swing since US-sponsored peace conference, in which Olmert committed to freeze settlement expansion

"Despite Israel's commitment to freeze construction in the settlements following the Annapolis peace conference in November 2007, construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has in fact increased in recent months, a new report published by Peace Now revealed Monday.

According to the Left-wing group, tenders for the construction of some 750 housing units in east Jerusalem have been published after the peace conference, a huge increase compared to the 46 tenders published last year.

All in all, the government is currently promoting the building of 3,648 new housing units in Jerusalem's neighborhoods located east of the Green Line, the report stated.

'Nothing left of Israel's promise'

Meanwhile, 101 settlements are currently being expanded, and thousands of housing units are under construction. About 20 of the projects are being carried out east of the separation fence's route.

Peace Now also claims that instead of removing outposts, the government has enabled their ongoing expansion. Construction has been registered in 58 outposts over the last three month; 36 new caravans have been placed in outposts and 16 permanent structures have been erected. The building of an additional eight permanent structures is currently underway.

"Since Olmert’s announcement at the Annapolis Summit regarding the freeze on the settlements, dozens of declarations have been published by ministers in his government who have tried to prevent the construction freeze and therefore reduce it to the point of ineffectiveness, until, in the end, almost nothing is left of the promise that Israel would freeze construction in the settlements," the organization concluded......."

Egypt arrests a bid to fix elections - rights group

"CAIRO, March 30 (Reuters) - Egypt's arrests of hundreds of opposition Islamists, including would-be candidates in local council elections due on April 8, amount to a "shameless bid" to fix the vote, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.

The U.S.-based rights group complained that Egypt had detained more than 800 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in recent weeks, including at least 148 would-be candidates in the council vote.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which holds a fifth of the seats in the lower house of parliament through members elected as independents, says it seeks an Islamic state through non-violent democratic means. It operates openly despite a decades-old ban.

Some 40 Brotherhood members are currently on trial in a military court over charges of belonging to a banned group and possessing anti-government literature. Local and international rights groups have criticised the trial as unfair.

"These ongoing mass arrests of opposition activists, on top of the military trial, are a shameless bid to fix the upcoming elections," Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"President (Hosni) Mubarak apparently believes that the outcome of the elections cannot be left up to voters," he said......."

The Farce goes on

Comment by Khalid Amayreh

"As prospects of true peace in Palestine look as bleak as ever, mainly because of Israeli intransigence and American complicity with the Zionist state, peace-loving people in the Middle East and around the world are once again affronted by yet another disingenuous visit to the region by US Secretary of State.

Rice has made numerous visits to Ramallah and occupied Jerusalem ever since she became Secretary of State more than three years ago.

However, the overall situation pertaining to the Palestinian plight has more or less remained unchanged. In fact, one can safely contend that the Israeli occupation and apartheid are now much worse than they were three years ago.

Hence, it is highly unlikely that Rice’s current visit is going to make any difference.

It is really not difficult to pinpoint the causes and reasons for the failure of American “peace efforts” in this part of the world.......

Why does Israel fly in the face of the Bush administration, which has asked Israel for the umpteenth time to relax its harsh and crippling measures against ordinary Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip?

The answer is very clear? Israel thinks, rightly or wrongly, that it controls the United States of America, that it controls American politics and policies, that it controls congress and media and major financial institutions in the US.

A few years ago, it was rumored that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Shimon Peres, who was then Foreign Minister, that “we control America and the Americans know it”

One Jewish settler leader in Hebron, whom this reporter met a few years ago, was even blunter. He said that “the Jewish people could bring America to its knees in less than 24 hours.”

I asked the apparently arrogant settler leader, who himself had immigrated to occupied Palestine from Florida, how a few million American Jews could bring the most powerful country on earth to its knees. “We don’t directly control the 300 million Americans,” he said rather ostentatiously. “We control those who control them.”......

Hence, it is imperative that the Palestinian people and their true leaders and representatives stop letting the United States of Israel …yes, the United States of Israel, to dupe them endlessly toward the liquidation of their enduring cause......."

Al-Jazeera Cartoon

Relaunch of the Arab "Peace Initiative"

A Great, LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CARLOS LATUFF

"My dear Associate, the brilliant Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff, speaks to Dr. Hesham Tillawi about his amazing work depicting the truth about the war on Iraq and the suffering of the Palestinian people.
There is also commentary regarding the upcoming US Presidential election on the following video…"

The stones of Suhmata

The village of Suhmata before it was destroyed in 1948 by Zionist militias.

Isabelle Humphries writing from Suhmata, Live from Palestine, 30 March 2008

(Isabelle Humphries has worked for several years with Palestinian non-governmental organizations in the Galilee, and is completing a doctoral thesis on Palestinian internally displaced)

"Unlike the majority of Palestinian refugees dispersed across the Middle East and beyond, Wagih Semaan can drive a few kilometers from his house, cross a ditch and a fence and sit in the stones of the village he was driven out of at the age of 11. But despite his Israeli "citizenship," he is no more able to return to live on his land than the Palestinian sitting in Ein al-Hilwe camp across the Lebanese border.

Wagih is one of more than 250,000 Palestinian refugees who are internally displaced -- they managed to remain in their homeland yet are denied access to their lands and homes. Like the rest of the million Palestinians inside Israel, internally displaced live with Israeli passports yet in all sectors are treated as second class citizens. While the brutality meted out to residents of the West Bank and Gaza demonstrates clearly that Palestinian life is not valued by the state of Israel, the second class status of Palestinians inside the Jewish state shows the inherent apartheid nature of a state defined as Jewish. Israeli apartheid would not end even in the (very unlikely) scenario that Israel totally withdrew to 1967 borders. The case of the internally displaced and land confiscation from Palestinians legally defined by Israel as "citizens" -- both in 1948, and continuing since that date -- undermines any Israeli claims that it functions as a democracy for its Palestinian citizens........"

Arab Dogs of the Empire

"We try to convince the people about the US, about British. They came here to give you peace" UAE Maj Ghanem al-Mazroui

Muslim troops help win Afghan minds

"The BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, can reveal that Arab soldiers have been taking part in dangerous missions alongside US troops in Afghanistan.

Troops from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been delivering humanitarian aid to their fellow Muslims and, on occasion, fighting their way out of Taleban ambushes. Though Jordanian forces have been carrying out some base security duties, the UAE's troops are the only Arab soldiers undertaking full-scale operations in the country.
Until now, their deployment has been kept so secret that not even their own countrymen knew they were here......."

Real News Video: Iraqi refugees in Syria

"Alive in Baghdad: A look at the daily struggle to make ends meet facing Iraqi's in Syria

Sunday March 30th, 2008

We show this segment courtesy of www.aliveinbaghdad.org. Alive in Baghdad employs Iraqi journalists to produce video packages each week about a variety of topics on daily life in Iraq."

The Path of Arab Summits
By Baha Bukhari

What a Waste of Oxygen!

Al-Jazeera Video: Iraqi Shia fighters refuse to surrender arms - 30 March 08

Palestinians protest over evictions

Comment: It is to be noted that this is the first time ever that the Land Day is commemorated in Jaffa. The state of Israel has maintained a policy to totally Judaize Jaffa, which is the city where I was born in 1945. My family and tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced out of Jaffa by the advancing Jewish terrorist gangs in 1948 in an ethnic cleansing campaign that is continuing to this day.

"More than 1,000 Arabs living in Israel have marched through the port city of Jaffa to commemorate the killing of six people during a 1976 protest against the confiscation of Palestinian land.

The demonstrators on Friday also denounced plans to move about 500 families out of the city south of Tel Aviv.

Israel has issued legal notices to the Arab families asking them to legally prove their ownership of land that they had occupied of leave it.

Palestinian families in Israel say that the authorities are forcing them out to bring Jews from abroad into Israel.

"We chose to hold one of the marches here this year because it is the government's policy to Judaize the city," Abed Satel, the head of the League for Arabs of Jaffa, said.

'Land Day'

The demonstration was one of several "Land Day" rallies being staged across the country.

The day has been observed by Israel's large Arab minority of 1.2 million every year since protesters clashed with security forces in 1976 after a government decision to expropriate land in the Galilee......

"The protesters have been demanding an end to the confiscation policy.

"They want to continue living in the land that they have lived in, and many of their parents have lived in. Both Israeli and Palestinian residents, say that the policy must stop."

Protesters waved Palestinian flags and banners in Arabic reading "We are here to stay, we will never leave our homes" and others in Hebrew reading "Take your hands off our homes".

"I came to protest because they want to demolish my home. They want to give it to French Jews," Laila Anad, one of the demonstrators, said......."