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(Haaretz) – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will stress to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at their scheduled meeting in Jerusalem Tuesday evening that Israel reserves the right to act freely in the Gaza Strip against Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups.
Olmert will also tell Rice that Israel is interested in continuing negotiations with moderate elements in the Palestinian Authority. In Olmert’s view, Israeli military activity in Gaza in the past few days has got the message across that Hamas needs to rethink its strategy.
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Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that Iran and its allies Syria and the Hezbollah were using the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip as a reference point to determine their own future actions with regard to Israel.
“The fact that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah are not shooting now does not mean they are out of the battle. Everyone is watching to see how the conflict in Gaza will end, to decide how to act.”
Hezbollah supporters protesting against the Gaza
offensive near the border with Israel. (Haaretz/AP)
According to Yadlin, Hamas was pressured into deciding “that the situation is intolerable and that the siege must be broken and a different equation forged in the conflict with Israel.”
Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin suggested that Hamas wants calm in Gaza so that at a later stage it can take over the West Bank.
A democratic, economically developed, politically organized and capable Palestinian state would change the situation in the Middle East. It would strengthen the status of the United States in the region, making it the player who had the courage, the vision and the ability to allow this to become a reality. It would significantly reduce Israel’s demographic concerns and may also serve to diminish the threat that Arab divisiveness poses to the stability of the region as a whole.
If so, then what stands in the way of reaching of a peace agreement?
Naturally, there are differences of opinion, particularly on issues such as Jerusalem and the territories, but there are also other factors.
While negotiations are meant to bridge differences of opinion, what truly impedes their progress are the inherent shortcomings of the process and the relatively narrow area within which the parties may operate between their constituencies and their negotiating partners. Such inherent complexities may affect the negotiations more so than their actual standpoints.
In order for a democratic Palestinian state to be established, the Palestinians must rid themselves of their divisiveness. For the state to be able to govern, it needs one government. One voice.
For a government to be able to maintain law, order and security, it needs one army, when, in fact, there are many armed groups amidst the Palestinians.
GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended peace negotiations with Israel, demanding it end a Gaza offensive that has killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
Many of the civilian casualties have come when Israeli missiles fired by helicopters, jets and unmanned drones have hit buildings and homes that the army said were used by militants.
Anti-Israeli demonstrations erupted in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces confronting stone-throwers near Hebron shot dead a 14-year-old boy wearing a Hamas headband, witnesses said.
ARAB ANGER
There has been popular sympathy for Gazans in the Arab world but restraint from Arab governments wary of Hamas’s militancy and links to non-Arab Iran. However, Saudi Arabia on Sunday said its fellow U.S. ally Israel was emulating “Nazi war crimes.”
Egypt opened its border crossing with Gaza, which has been sealed off as part of Israel’s efforts to blockade Hamas, to let some 40 wounded Palestinians receive care in Egyptian hospitals.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Muslims to strike back and slammed Iran’s U.S. enemy for backing Israel.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused Israel of using “excessive force” and demanded a halt to the assault.
The Security Council also met to urge an end to violence, while the European Union condemned Israel’s attacks as disproportionate and violating international law.
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The Israeli’s want Hamas in power. Its their excuse to act like barbarians. The PLO was in power for years. Israel slandered the PLO and tortured the Palestinians. A desperate population elects Hamas and now they are ostracized by there own allies and the world. My God how the Palestinian people have suffered.
Israel needs to give back ALL of the land stolen in the Nakba. All the Israeli settlement should be given to the Palestinians as payment for sixty years of illegal occupation.
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As head of the Gazan PSS, Dahlan was responsible for restraining those Palestinian militants, specifically Hamas, who rejected the Oslo process and hoped to sabotage a negotiated settlement through strategically-timed attacks on Israeli targets. Dahlan is believed to have drawn up a plan for containing Hamas, in a meeting in Rome in January 1994 with senior IDF and Shin Bet officials, and until 2001 he met regularly with Israeli (and U.S.) defense officials to coordinate security issues.
In 1995, following a spate of Hamas suicide attacks on Israeli buses, intended to push the Israeli electorate to the Right and away from the Oslo-friendly Labour government of Shimon Peres, Dahlan cracked down hard on Hamas’ infrastructure. On orders from Arafat, Dahlan disarmed and jailed about 2,000 known Hamas members, shaved them of their beards (and allegedly tortured some).
His police also raided and closed Islamic charities, schools and mosques. Israel Hasson, deputy head of Shin Bet and former Israeli negotiator, assessed that the PA’s 1996 actions against Hamas were extremely effective, and Uri Savir, former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and current head of the Peres Centre for Peace recalled that, “After the series of bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 1996, Dahlan was very effective in fighting Hamas and its infrastructure.”
Where in the world is Fatah’s strongman Dahlan? | Jerusalem Post
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
“Oslo-friendly Labour government of Shimon Peres”
Hamas did continue sporadic attacks inside of Israel until 1998, when a lull lasting a few years intervened before the Second Intifada erupted. But what did the Oslo period, when the Clinton administration was in power, bring? Settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza doubled. Oslo brought vague promises of peace, but with Israel’s accelerated colonialism under the Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Sharon, it instead acted to further undermine the possibility of creating a Palestinian state.
Ask any Palestinian which president did more damage to the prospects of a peace settlement and he will respond, Clinton, notwithstanding his Camp David/Taba, which in retrospect was a hoax from the beginning. It was not until 2005 that Ehud Barak admitted it: he was incapable of politically removing even a single one of the 150 Israeli settlements Israel had built in the West Bank and Gaza. Well, since “settlements were off the table” at the start of the negotiations, that was a no-brainer. Clinton went on to do more damage by agreeing to the Israeli rouse of blaming Arafat for not accepting the “generous offer.”
Israel needs Hamas right now to fend off Bush’s threats to finalize a deal during his last year in office. Piece of cake.
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JERUSALEM (AFP) – High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."