AP’s Steven Weizman reported today that
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday he had given the go ahead for a shipment of weapons to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose loyalists are engaged in bitter infighting with the militant Islamic Hamas.
… “I authorized last night the transfer of arms and ammunition to chairman Abu Mazen in order to strengthen his presidential guard, so he can strengthen his forces against Hamas,” Olmert said, referring to Abbas by his widely-used nickname.
This is quite tragic. Of course, if Olmert had really wanted to strengthen Pres. Abbas’s position vis-a-vis Hamas, he and the then-active Ariel Sharon had every opportunity to do so throughout all of 2005, when Abbas was the duly elected PA president and he had a pliant Fateh person, Abu Alaa’, as prime minister. For all that year (and until now) Abbas begged and beseeched Sharon and Olmert to give him something politically, in terms of meaningful peace negotiations or elements of the content thereof, that he could take to his people and show them thereby that his approach was fruitful for them.
But Sharon and Olmert steadfastly refused to give Abbas anything at all. Indeed, they left him looking quite impotent in front of his people.
And now they want to give him arms to fight Hamas?
What I would love to hear from Abu Mazen at this point is a clear statement “No! I don’t seek arms from Israel for this or any other purpose!” … And also, some real progress on the national reconciliation talks with the Hamas leadership…
There’s nothing new in the Israeli approach, but it is a much more serious situation than the ‘Village Leagues’ idea of the 1980’s.PLO/Fatah hasn’t been seriously challanged since the 1960’s.
The strength of the Israeli position in this gambit, is proportional to Abbas’ weakness. General support for Fatah probably hasn’t dropped much, but for the leadership it has. A Marwon Barghouti led-Fatah would be a different proposition.
Unfortunately there are no good prospects on the horizon for the Palestinian people. The solutions are relatively simple, but it seems very unlikely they will be enacted by the people with the power to do so.
It’s a bit hard not to be pessimistic today.
At the present time this situation looks hopeless for the Palestinians. They are making all the wrong moves, and they are allowing themselves to be played by Israel. Looks like this train has left the station. Israel will get all that Israel wants, the way they want it.
What I would love to hear from Abu Mazen at this point is a clear statement “No! I don’t seek arms from Israel for this or any other purpose!”
And a pony! The former head of the Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, claims that Israeli intelligence helped promote Abu Mazen to prime minister, as an attempt to sideline Arafat. Israeli support is crucial to Abu Mazen’s grip on power and expecting him to stand up to them is just silly. You might as well ask Mubarak to turn down the $2 billion a year we give him.
disgusting. we think you are a bunch of terrorists so we’re going to starve you to death. But you can have weapons, as long as you use them on each other. How could hell be any worse?
like the lack of FOOD has nothing to do with the tension. Why this isn’t a bigger story I have no idea.
This is all the excuse the Israeli’s think they need to finish off the Palestinans completely. They will go back to the methods they used in 1948 and, with the first shots fired by the Palestinians, start massacres of Palestinians until the survivors flee into the desert or wherever they can go. The American Media will repeat whatever outrageous lies the Israeli’s order them to tell the US public when reports of hastily buried bodies leak out….and then Olmert will come back here to see Bush again and request (order) him to give Israel many billions of the snookered American tax payer’s hard earned dollars, to continue building their wall and nursing their victimhood.
Israelis working hard not just in West Bank and Gaza, here is a big blow for Israeli Mosad now in Lebanon
“Times Online June 15, 2006
Lebanon exposes deadly Israeli spy ring
From Nicholas Blanford of The Times in Beirut
Lebanese authorities have broken up an apparent Israeli spy ring whose members have claimed responsibility for a string of killings of leading Hezbollah and Palestinian militants since 1999.
The spies’ confessions, reported extensively in the Lebanese media, provide a rare glimpse into the clandestine battle between the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency and the Hezbollah organisation and its militant Palestinian allies. ”
In Arabic Text here
Yah… PEACE LOVING PEOPLE, they are so peaceful and love to live in peace with their neighbours “Arab Nation” it’s all fake
yes, the New York Times report on the alleged Israeli spy ring was interesting. What you didn’t mention, however, is that according to Times’ reporter Nicholas Blandford, Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader and no friend of Israel, scoffed at the “spy ring” allegations…
“Referring to the murder last year of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon’s Druze and an outspoken critic of Hezbollah, told The Times: “We are expected to believe that this big spy ring was uncovered two weeks after the killing…[by the alleged Mossad spies]…of the Majzoub brothers, yet Rafik Hariri died in February 2005 and we still don’t know who killed him.”
Accordingly, Blandford concludes that the spy ring allegations are “opportune for Hezbollah” who is under pressure from Lebanese nationalists to disarm its independent militia.
How disgraceful of Israel to expect the PA to disarm Hamas and the other “militias” just because they have agreed to do so numerous times. The next the you know thus pushy Jews will want peace in exchange for territorial concessions.
that the spy ring allegations”
What “allegations” here? The arrested head of one network Mahmmod Rafa’a admitting he did brings explosives and distributed all around and he admitted that he lave relation with Mosad, what are the “allegations”
However I think what Blandford conclusion to downgrade this story to be looks like internal conflict between Lebanon political elements, of course Hezbollah will use this as much to benefits from it in political gain in Lebanon but still its Israeli Mosad ugly work.
Well put, Helena! Finally someone who gets it!
“Walid Jumblatt…scoffed at the “spy ring” allegations…”
Walid Jumblatt! Really! As if Walid Jumblatt is a credible person. Jumblatt scoffs or praises only to promote his personal ambitions.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33002
^dennis prager column from 03. read between the lines, they’ve wanted this all along
Ohhh, yah ” Dennis Prager has written an expressly racist anti-Muslim op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, and Juan Cole has deftly shredded it.”
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/11/dennis-prager-racist.html
salah- Alot of americans, the neo con ideas were the first thing we learned about the middle east. I’ve been unlearning them since about day 2 after saddams statue fell. fortunaely, most republicans are more interested in immigration than Iraq now.
“Americans have grown up in Sunday Schools being taught stories from the Bible, American kids learn that the Jews’ attack upon, conquest of, and slaughter of the Canaanites, Philistines, and other indigenous peoples of Palestine was good and right; ordained by God himself! Imagine the effect of such ideas on little children! The Old Testament makes it clear: Jews-Good: Canaanites-Bad.”
if Saudis accused to be the sources of Islam extremists by promoting Wahabi thoughts for more than 100 years with support and protection by US, and we see how that used these days with all what follows to blaming Islam and Muslims.
To me it’s same as Sunday Schools and its teaching, but how far we can get and how you can change its hard to say unless we weak up and read the world in new way with full open eyes.
In Arabic we say “Learning in Childhood Like Writing on Stones”.
Salah makes an excellent point that not enough attention is paid to the ruinous fallout from the sectarian hatred nurtured by many zealous educators and their curricula in the name of religion.
Collective memory divides the world in two : ’us’ and ’them’. Us, the victims and heroes, and them, the criminals, oppressors, cowards, followers. This ’us’ does not depend on the extent of the crime or suffering. It is the way it is used which determines truth and reality. As a result, being victim or heroes becomes as an inheritance. But I will concentrate on what we are used to see as victims. On a collective level, it suffices to be a self-declared victim, and to be recognised as such, and then any violent or criminal act done by this collective of victims will be judged with indulgence. With even the suffering endured by others becoming a subject of suspicion. If a scale of suffering is established, then violence caused by a victim is not real suffering. This is the case in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and it is also what Edward Said, the Palestinian scholar from Colombia University, means when he says, ” we (Palestinians) are the victims of the victims”