Britain leaves Iraq in shame. The US won't go so quietly

Obama was elected on the back of revulsion at Bush's war, but greater pressure will be needed to force a full withdrawal

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday December 11 2008

"If British troops are indeed withdrawn from Iraq by next June, it will signal the end of the most shameful and disastrous episode in modern British history. Branded only last month by Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's most senior law lord, as a "serious violation of international law", the aggression against Iraq has not only devastated an entire country and left hundreds of thousands dead - it has also been a political and military humiliation for the invading powers.

In the case of Britain, which marched into a sovereign state at the bidding of an extreme and reckless US administration, the war has been a national disgrace which has damaged the country's international standing. Britain's armed forces will withdraw from Iraq with dishonour. Not only were they driven from Basra city last summer under cover of darkness by determined resistance, just as British colonial troops were forced out of Aden 40 years ago - and Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, before that. But they leave behind them an accumulation of evidence of prisoner beatings, torture and killings, for which only one low-ranking soldier, Corporal Payne, has so far been singled out for punishment.....

And since his November triumph, Obama has gone out of his way to emphasise his commitment to maintaining a "residual force" for fighting "terrorism", training and protection of US civilians - which his security adviser Richard Danzig estimated could amount to between 30,000 and 55,000 troops.

Briefings by Pentagon officials have also made clear this residual force could remain long after 2011. It turns out that the new security agreement can be ditched by either side, while the Iraqi government is fully entitled to invite US troops to remain, as explained in the accompanying "strategic framework agreement", so long as its bases or presence are not defined as "permanent". And given that the current Iraqi government would be unlikely to survive a week without US protection, such a request is a fair bet. Combat troops can also be "re-missioned" as "support units", it transpires, and even the last-minute concession of a referendum on the agreement next year will not, the Iraqi government now says, be binding.

None of this means there won't be a substantial withdrawal of troops from Iraq after Obama takes over the White House next month. But how far that withdrawal goes will depend on the kind of pressure he faces both at home and in Iraq. The US establishment clearly remains committed to a long-term stewardship of Iraq. The Iraqi government is at this moment negotiating secret 20-year contracts with US and British oil majors to manage 90% of the country's oil production. The struggle to end US occupation and control of the country is far from won......"

UN attacks Israeli rights 'crimes'

Al-Jazeera

"Israel's policies against the Palestinians are tantamount to a "crime against humanity", the United Nations' human rights rapporteur has said.

Richard Falk [COMMENT: Dr. Falk is a Jewish American emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University] said in a statement on Tuesday that the UN must "implement the agreed norm of a responsibility to protect a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a crime against humanity".

The statement came on the same day that the UN Human Rights Council urged Israel to implement 99 measures to improve its rights record.

Falk said it would seem "mandatory" that the UN's International Criminal Court investigate Israel’s policies in regard to the Palestinians.

"[The court could] determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law," he said.

The Israeli government has faced a level of criticism by "normally cautious UN officials" not seen since the "the heyday of South African apartheid," Falk said.

"And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease."......"

Israel’s Hitler to Join the Knesset

From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem
10 December, 2008

"His name is Moshe Feiglin, but he may very well be called Israel’s Adolph Hitler. On Monday, 8 December, the day the Likud held its primaries, Feiglin won a respectable position on the Likud’s Knesset list for the upcoming Israeli elections, slated to take place on 10 February. This means, almost certainly, that Feiglin will become a Knesset member as all opinion polls indicate that the jingoistic party will win the elections and form Israel’s next government.

Calling Feiglin a “Hitler” is not an exaggeration at all. The man stands for and advocates all the fascist ideas and ideals that made Hitler the Nazism evil. In fact, whatever differences there may be between people like Feiglin and the hated Nazi hierarchy have more to do with form rather than substance, e.g. Hitler and ilk believed in the superiority of the Master Aryan Race while Feiglin and tens of thousands of supporters believe in the superiority of the Chosen People over goyem.. And while Hitler would call German territorial expansionism “lebensraum,” Feiglin uses a lesser sophisticated term in reference to Israel’s territorial aggrandizement: Eretz Yisrael ha’Shlema (the Greater Land of Israel) which includes, in addition to mandatory Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and large parts of Syria, Iraq and Egypt......

In 2001, Feiglin urged George W. Bush to fight and try to destroy the religion of Islam, arguing that without targeting Islam itself, the US wouldn’t win the war against terror......

No black sheep

Despite his manifestly Nazi-like ideology, Feiglin is by no means a “black sheep” within the Likud, a increasingly fascist party in light of the stridently-fascist views held by the bulk of its leaders and members.

In fact, one can argue with little exaggeration that the Likud in its entirety is now a fascist party par excellence, with the “Feiglin line of thinking” representing the norm rather than the exception.

Take, for example, party leader Benyamin Netanyahu. This man stands for the intensification of Jewish colonization in the West Bank, the acceleration of the pace of Judazing East Jerusalem and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians both in Israel proper and the occupied territories......"

Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

An Interview with Afshin Rattansi (Press TV)

By JOSHUA FRANK
CounterPunch

"Afshin Rattansi has for more than a decade worked in broadcast and print media around the world. In the UK, he has worked at The Guardian, the New Statesman, for every regional and national outlet of the BBC. In 1999, he helped to launch the developing world's first global financial news and current affairs channel. He is currently a news anchor for Press TV. Rattansi has written six novels including "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels". He recently spoke with Joshua Frank about Press TV.

Joshua Frank: Afshin, can you tell us a little about Press TV? How long has the station been on the air?

Afshin Rattansi: Certainly more than a year. It's an initiative by the Iranian government to counter some of the more crazy assumptions that other international channels make about the Middle East. Of course, given the crippling siege of Gaza at the moment, international media can't even get into the place so that makes Press TV uniquely able to cover something that the rest of the world's media seems to have forgotten. The "narrative", as the fashionable post po-mo word goes, seems to be that the U.S. made a mistake by invading Iraq rather than the whole operation being an international war crime.

If Press TV can redress the balance a bit, it would be good......

Frank: You aren't a native of Iran, so how did you get involved with Press TV?

Rattansi: There may be some Iranian in me! Afshin is an Iranian name and I think there is a possibility my roots are from the a magician's castle in Alamut but that's a long story and goes back a thousand years or so,

But seriously, I had been at Bloomberg News, hired to revamp things, after my time at CNN International and Al Jazeera Arabic and, most enlightening of all, the Today programme at the BBC. The mainstream coverage in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was very poor even if Today and its source, the late David Kelly, tried its best to allow listeners another view of what the British government was spouting about WMD in Iraq. It was odd as twenty years ago I was accused of being against an ally, Saddam Hussein. I had helped make a documentary for Channel 4 in the UK about how Western companies, in particular architectural firms akin to Albert Speer acolytes, were aiding Saddam.

The British government didn't like it at all and yet, once I was working at Today, my colleagues and I were being accused of being apologists for Saddam because we could tell that the government was lying about WMD. Blair's people unleashed an onslaught that led to the resignations of all the most senior staff at the BBC. I left for the Jazeera Arabic programme, Top Secret, which identified the 911 attackers when Osama bin Laden himself contacted the programme to name the perpetrators. They would be caught even as we ran the trailers.

Well, after that story the Qatari Al Jazeera Arabic was chastened as we prepared for the launch of the English-language channel.......

It was in this context, that I was getting worried that the same mistakes were going to be made all over again, vis a vis Iran. For me, the deaths of more than a million people in Iraq let alone the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan were axiomatic. Reading Seymour Hersh had me worried and I still don't know if he was being used. But Iran was the story. Thankfully, that's died down a little. But going to Tehran seemed a responsible thing to do......"

Greenspan: There is a Flaw in My Soup!

Capitalist Fools

Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion.

By Joseph Stiglitz
(Nobel Prize Winner in Economics and Professor at Columbia University)
Vanity Fair

"......The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, "I have found a flaw." Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working." "Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan said. The embrace by America-and much of the rest of the world-of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today."

Unsteady Calm Following Settler Violence Against Palestinian Residents in Hebron

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"We turn to the troubled West Bank city of Hebron where the city’s Palestinian residents have been at the receiving end of a new wave of attacks from hardline Jewish settlers.

Violence flared last week after Israeli riot police forcibly evicted some 250 settlers from a disputed Palestinian-owned home that the settlers had occupied last year. Tensions have been high ever since an Israeli High Court ruling last month that ordered the settlers to vacate the building.

Following Thursday"s eviction, settlers from the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement went on what the Israeli press has described as a “rampage” against Palestinians. They shot at Palestinians, set fire to homes, cars, and olive groves, and defaced mosques and graves. Hebron resident Hosni Abu Seifan was among the Palestinian victims of settler gunfire.

The shots fired by the settlers at Hosni Abu Seifan and his father were captured on video. The footage shows a settler firing a handgun at the two Palestinian men at close range. The video was shot by a family member of the injured men. He was using a camera distributed by the Israeli human rights group B"tselem that has given more than a hundred video cameras to Palestinian families across the West Bank so they can record violence by settlers and the Israeli army.......

We’re joined now by two guests via video stream from Hebron who work closely with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Mich’ael Zupraner works with B"tselem"s shooting back project that distributes cameras to Palestinians and he also runs an experimental Internet TV channel called HEB2. Issa Amro is a longtime resident of Hebron and a field worker for B"Tselem......"

This Genocide Will Not Be Televised: No Eid celebration in Gaza

The Pharaoh's Troops, Acting as Subcontractors to the IOF, Are Keeping the Rafah Crossing Tightly Closed to Make Sure That More Palestinian Children Starve. Way to Go Pharaoh, You and the Rest of The Silent And Collaborating War Criminal Arab Regimes; TFU!

Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 9 December 2008

(Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in Gaza, after the third successful voyage of the Free Gaza Movement to break the siege on Gaza)

"......."On Saturday, the World Bank stated that "The ongoing closure of Gaza and severe restrictions on the flow of goods and people continues to be a cause of grave concern." Two weeks earlier, John Ging, Director of Operations in Gaza for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, called the situation in Gaza "very desperate at the humanitarian level." He added that "people have been stripped of their dignity here, it is a struggle to survive for everybody," noting that half of Gaza's 1.5 million citizens are children.

UNRWA, along with other relief agencies in Gaza, provides food aid to 80 percent of the Gaza population. Even UN supplies were depleted in mid-November as a result of the closed borders, which Israel has sealed since 4 November allowing only brief openings to provide minimal amounts of food aid and fuel insufficient for Gaza's depleted stocks. Ging noted that "It was unprecedented that we ran out of food, which we did over 10 days ago. The closures are becoming more and more restrictive, the situation here is getting worse and worse."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced on Sunday that Gaza's crossings would remain closed. UNRWA officials also announced that food aid supplies will last only for two or three more days if the borders remain closed. Emphasizing that Israel is merely drip-feeding Gaza, a UN official stated that "the 16 truckloads Israel allowed into the Gaza Strip last Thursday were not enough in light of the brewing humanitarian crisis."........"

Video: Fourth blockade-defying boat docks in Gaza port.wmv

A Good Video
From Press TV

'Hezbollah refuses to meet Carter'

Press TV

"Hezbollah leaders have refused to meet former US President Jimmy Carter, who is on a two-day visit to Lebanon, a Carter spokesman says. Carter, who had expressed his readiness to meet with Lebanon's Hezbollah officials, arrived in Beirut on Tuesday.

"I understand that some of the leaders of Hezbollah have said they were not going to meet with any president or former presidents of the United States," Carter said upon his arrival at Beirut airport, adding that he would meet other leaders. Carter's spokesman Rick Jafculca said Wednesday that Hezbollah turned down a request to meet Jimmy Carter. "They said they were not able to meet," Jafculca said.

Carter's Lebanon visit will be followed by a trip to neighboring Syria, where he held two meetings with Hamas political leader Khalid Meshaal in May. The meeting was strongly opposed by Washington and Israel, which insist Hamas is a terrorist organization despite its victory in Palestinian elections in 2006.

Jimmy Carter describes Israel's blockade of Gaza as one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth.

Carter is expected to meet President Bashar al-Assad during his visit to Syria. "

Egypt recalls Iran envoy after public protest against cooperation with Israel

"Egypt has recalled its diplomatic envoy from Tehran after a protest was held in front of its interest section, Iran's Fars news agency reported Wednesday.

Hundreds of Islamist students staged a gathering on Monday in front of the Egyptian embassy's interest section in Tehran in protest against Egypt's continued cooperation with political arch-foe Israel over the ongoing siege of the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.

Despite reassurances by Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi that the diplomatic missions in Tehran were sufficiently secured, Cairo decided to recall its envoy from the Islamic state......"

Iran's demonstrations irk Egypt

Press TV

"The Egyptian Foreign Ministry summons Iranian diplomatic representative in Cairo in protest against recent anti-Egypt demonstrations in Iran.

In a statement issued Tuesday by the Foreign Ministry, Egypt expressed its complaint on the demonstrations staged from time to time outside the office of the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Tehran.

Iranian students staged a demonstration on Monday in front of the Egyptian interest section in Tehran in protest at Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and Egypt's collaboration with Israel.

Several similar protests have been recently held outside embassies of other Arab countries in Tehran which seem to be cooperating with Israel by failing to push for lifting the siege on Gaza.

The Egyptian ministry also criticized some Iranian newspapers that have repeatedly insulted Cairo's policies and leadership, said the statement without giving further details......."

Heil Feiglin!

Feiglin's missing manifesto: Israel should quit UN, cut off water to Palestinians

"An extreme right-wing text by Likud member Moshe Feiglin disappeared on Tuesday from the Web site of his Jewish Leadership movement. In the piece written five years ago, Feiglin says Israel should cut off water and electricity service to the Palestinian territories, withdraw from the United Nations and boycott the Olympics.

The text, written by the man who captured 20th place on Likud's Knesset list yesterday, is called "the day after" and details the radical policies he would pursue if he became prime minister. The manifesto was removed hours after the party's primary results were announced. Haaretz, however, obtained a copy........

Feiglin wrote that he would then address the Palestinian issue by ordering "the complete cessation" of funds, goods, water, electricity and communication to the Palestinian Authority. Any attack on an Israeli target would incur "the conquest of the area whose residents instigated the violence, their deportation and destruction of the area's infrastructure."

At the same time, the defense budget would be cut by 30 percent by retiring all non-lethal anti-protest ammunition such as rubber-tipped bullets and tear gas. Instead, security forces would use live bullets against Palestinian protesters. "The [non-lethal] ammunition aimed at preventing enemy casualties, which goes against the army's essence, will be destroyed in mandatory ceremonies held at every base," Feiglin wrote.

In the paper, he vociferously rejects the Palestinians' right to a state and argues that they do not exist as a distinct nationality separate from the Arabs. "There is no Palestinian people, nor has there ever been, and there never will be a Palestinian state," Feiglin wrote. "We shall offer them human rights without civil rights, so long as they prove their loyalty to their Jewish state host and accept Jewish sovereignty over their land. In such a situation they will be given legal-resident status and they can carry on their private affairs without anyone infringing on their human rights."

He adds: "They will have to seek the right to self-determination in Arab states. Israel will encourage the Arabs to emigrate to their countries and assist any Arab who wishes to do so as much as it can."....."

Beware the New Globalism

All hail the coming regionalist revolt

By Justin Raimondo

".......However, the world government idea is – I predict – going to gain new traction in the coming years, and this is especially on account of the economic crisis currently roiling world markets. The problem, they'll tell us, is global: world markets need to be regulated (for our own good, of course), and therefore what we need is "global governance," the catch phrase that has been coined by the policy wonks pushing this project. Indeed, we are already hearing calls for One World from such august publications as the Financial Times, whose foreign affairs columnist, Gideon Rachman, starts out his piece thusly:

"I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the U.S. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.".........

Number one is the globalization of the "crisis" mentality that our international elites have seized on as a rationale for extending their power, and not just over the economic meltdown, but also over global warming and "a global war on terror." The quote marks are Rachman's, but I doubt he intends any irony here: it's clear that, at first, the strategy is to emphasize non-military "soft" issues, like the global warming craze, to mask the real issue, which is that all states claim a monopoly of force over a given geographical area. What's different about this "global governance" business, however, is that the new state aborning would claim jurisdiction over the whole earth. There would be no place to hide, either for criminals or dissidents; no Coventry where the long hand of the state could not reach to grasp you by the collar. At first, such a world state would have to tolerate a fair degree of autonomy, but in the end, there's no competition allowed in the business of state-construction: either you have a monopoly over the use of force, or you don't.......

Socialist and Keynesian economists have long dreamed of a world central bank that could inflate a global currency at will and effectively regulate the world economy. As the Greenspan Bubble bursts and the effects ripple outward, expect such proposals to take on a more concrete character, especially with many in the incoming Obama administration so amenable to internationalist perspectives. This will form the real solid core of the world state, if such is to emerge, and the rest – a standing army, the "democratic" institutions masking its intrinsic authoritarianism – will naturally follow. "

الى اوباما: افغانستان ليست العراق

الى اوباما: افغانستان ليست العراق

عبد الباري عطوان

"......
' رابعا: من الصعب تشكيل مجالس صحوة في افغانستان لأن الشعب الافغاني يرفض كلياً، وفي غالبيته، التعاون مع المحتل، ويتحلى بقيم اسلامية رفيعة، فلم يحدث مطلقا ان جرى تسليم عربي او طالباني مجاهد لقوات الاحتلال، فقبيلة 'البشتون' لهـــا مبدأ مــــعروف هو 'بشتـــــون والـــي' الذي يحظر تسليم اي مسلم التجأ اليها، ولهذا لم يتم حتى الآن العثور، وبالتالي اعتقال او قتل الشيخين اسامة بن لادن والملا عمر، وفشلت كل المحاولات لقتل الثالث الدكتور ايمن الظــواهري. وتكفي الاشارة الى ان الملا عمر خسر الحكم على ان يسلم ضيفه زعيم تنظيم 'القاعــــدة'، بينما يتكالب زعماء 'العراق الجديد' من السنة والشيعة والاكراد على المحتل من اجل الفوز بمنصب في الحكومة.

أيام الرئيس المقبل اوباما في افغانستان ستكون صعبة، فمعظم القوات الغازية المحتلة لهذا البلد منيت بخسائر كبيرة، اضطرتها للهرب لتقليصها، متجرعة كأس الهزيمة المر، هذا ما حدث للانكليز مرتين، وللسوفييت مرة، والامريكان لن يكونوا افضل حالاً.
حامد كرزاي يستجدي المصالحة مع 'طالبان' ويعرض التنازل عن حكمه الذي لا يحكم، ورئاسته التي لا ترأس، ويخطط للعودة الى منفاه في الغرب، بعد ان كان الفتى المدلل للغرب وامريكا. القاسم المشترك الوحيد بين افغانستان والعراق، غير الاحتلال الامريكي، هو ان حكام البلدين الذين اوصلتهم امريكا الى سدة الحكم لن يبقوا يوماً واحداً بعد انسحابها، ومن يزر لندن هذه الأيام يدرك جيداً ان معظم حكام العراق الجدد قد رتبوا أمورهم وأمور عائلاتهم جيداً، مالياً وعقارياً.
"

The Middle East has a brighter future than it did seven years ago

By George W Bush
The Independent

".......Iraq has gone from an enemy of America to a friend of America, from sponsoring terror to fighting terror, and from a brutal dictatorship to a multi-religious, multi-ethnic constitutional democracy. Instead of the Iraq we would see if Saddam Hussein were in power – an aggressive regime vastly enriched by oil, defying the United Nations, bullying its Arab neighbours, threatening Israel, and pursuing a nuclear arms race with Iran – we see an Iraq emerging peacefully with its neighbours, showing the Middle East a powerful example of a moderate, prosperous, free nation......."

Greek Myths

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Dave Brown, The Independent

Two-tier Israel

It's not just Jews who are endangered by hazardous industrial waste – other groups are equally entitled to respite

Seth Freedman

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 9 2008

".....ACRI's (Association of Civil Rights in Israel) annual report, published yesterday, stated that "the main obstacle to preventing discrimination in Israel stems from the lack of true internalisation of the value of equality in Israeli society", a view born out time and again in the double standards applied by both the public and their elected officials. In the wake of the cancer scare in Tel Arad, one father's words spoke volumes about the way in which he – and others – view the society in which they live: "At the end of the day, this matter is important to every parent in Israel. We were all soldiers once, or have kids in the service".

In his eyes, Israelis are those that served in the army and/or have children who follow suit. No mention of those citizens not of Jewish ancestry, who on paper should warrant as much compassion and concern as those of Jewish extraction. But it's hardly surprising that he sees his country through such Star of David-tinted spectacles, given the way in which the government and its agencies encourages Israeli society to view itself. The Jewish state; the land sworn to us by our forefathers; the refuge and homeland of every Jew on earth, hardly conducive to an image of multiculturalism and tolerance of those not of the flock.

Developments in Tel Arad are worth monitoring, not just for those of us who served inside the apparently-poisonous clime of its razor wire perimeter fence, but for anyone with an interest in how Israeli officialdom deals with a situation that it has known about for years, but done nothing to solve until it became apparent that Jewish children were at risk as well........."

Anger as Egypt sheikh meets Peres

BBC

"Egypt's top Muslim cleric is under pressure to resign from politicians and newspapers for shaking the hand of Israeli President Shimon Peres. Criticism has been steadily growing since the newspapers began running a photograph of the Sheikh Mohammad Sayyid Tantawi greeting Mr Peres. The two met at the United Nations sponsored interfaith conference in New York in November.....

He says the meeting was in passing, insisting that he didn't recognise the Israeli president. But his explanation has done little to deflect the criticism. Among others, the leading independent newspaper al-Dustour, has been running a daily campaign calling for his dismissal. The newspaper said Shimon Peres, whose career in Israeli politics has spanned 60 years, is tainted with the blood of thousands of Palestinians and that Sheikh Tantawi should richly purify his hands.....

The (Israeli) newspaper Maarif reported that it was Sheikh Tantawi that approached the Israeli president.

Although Shimon Peres has declined to comment on the row, his office said at the time the encounter was pleasant and that during dinner the two men had a very serious conversation.....

But Sheikh Tantawi, say commentators, is the leader of Sunni Islam and by shaking the hand of the Israeli president, he's seen as normalising relations with Israel while at the same time associating himself with the Egyptian regime, which is deeply unpopular in many quarters."

البرغوثي: انتخابات رئاسية بالضفة دون غزة جريمة وجنون

"طالب رئيس المبادرة الوطنية الفلسطينية ووزير الإعلام الفلسطيني السابق مصطفى البرغوثي بإجراء الانتخابات الرئاسية والتشريعية الفلسطينية القادمة على قاعدة الوفاق الوطني، معتبرا أن إجراءها في الضفة الغربية دون قطاع غزة جريمة وجنون.
وحذر البرغوثي في حوار خاص بالجزيرة نت من أي تفكير في التلاعب بهذه الانتخابات وعدم إجرائها على كل الأراضي الفلسطينية بلا استثناء، معتبرا ذلك خدمة للمخطط الإسرائيلي الهادف لتكريس الفصل الكامل بين الضفة والقطاع.
ورأى أن تمديد رئاسة محمود عباس رئيسا للسلطة الفلسطينية سيجعل الأخير في وضع أضعف ويمكّن إسرائيل من التشكيك في وجود قيادة قادرة على تمثيل كل الفلسطينيين.
واقترح البرغوثي تشكيل حكومة وفاق وطني مؤقتة لفترة قصيرة تقوم بالإعداد لإجراء انتخابات رئاسية وتشريعية في موعد متزامن وتضمن نزاهة هذه الانتخابات، كما دعا لتقليص حجم الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية وإعادة تشكيلها على أساس وطني يبتعد عن الحزبية ويتخلى عن مبدأ التنسيق الأمني مع إسرائيل.
وأكد رئيس المبادرة الوطنية الفلسطينية أهمية إجراء إصلاح شامل وجذري في منظمة التحرير على أساس من المشاركة الديمقراطية للشعب الفلسطيني على قاعدة التمثيل النسبي في بناء هيئاتها وفتح أبوابها لكل القوى.

....."

The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

The Legacy of Resolution 194

By GHADA KARMI
CounterPunch

"Sixty years ago, on 11 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly passed an important resolution about Israel and the Palestinians. It called on the newly formed Israeli state to repatriate the displaced Palestinians “wishing to live in peace with their neighbours…at the earliest practicable date”, and to compensate them for their losses. A Conciliation Commission was set up to oversee the repatriation of the returnees. Though never implemented and frequently ignored since then, Resolution 194 has haunted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ever since, and has proved the most insurmountable obstacle in all peace negotiations. It is the legal basis for the ‘right of return’, to which Palestinians have clung for sixty years.....

There is only one solution for this sixty-year old impasse that addresses the rights of Palestinians, Israelis and the needs of justice. Only a unitary state in Israel-Palestine can encompass the returning Palestinians and ensure the continued existence of an Israeli Jewish community, however egregious their presence in that land. In this anniversary year, it is time that Resolution 194 was laid to rest, not by neglect as Israel has long been hoping, but by a new UN resolution. This will affirm the Palestinian right to return to the towns and villages their ancestors had inhabited for generations, and call for Israelis and Palestinians to share the land between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan, in a secular, democratic state, where the rights of all its citizens to freedom of worship, security, and equality are enshrined in law.

Neither side can win the war over exclusive ownership of historic Palestine. Israel’s attempt to do so has only caused unending conflict and suffering. The UN made Israel and must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state. If that happens, it will be an anniversary truly worth celebrating. "

This is Really Great, Old "Faithful" Lady......
Stoning The Devil Must Be Very Empowering!
But What Are YOU Doing About Starving Gaza??