Words and Deeds

 

Though the end of occupation is indeed a necessity, it won't secure any peace deal. The Palestinian cause is largely about the right of return and a solution to the refugee problem, argues Gilad Atzmon.

 Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London

 

Middle East On-Line   2007-02-10, Last Updated 2007-02-10 10:14:36

 

What matters is what the Palestinians do

David Ben Gurion, the legendary Zionist leader as well as Israel's first Prime Minister, used to say: "What matters is not what the Goyim say, what matters is what the Jews do".

 

A few days ago a group of Jews who may have been independent at one stage decided to gather and to form a new collective peace-loving humanist synagogue. They call themselves the Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). They are determined to challenge the hegemony of the Board Of Deputies Of British Jews (BOD). I am far from being a supporter of the Board of Deputies, in fact, I despise them. Yet, being a Jew by origin, I have never regarded this body as a representative of either myself or any of my so-called Jewish friends.

 

Furthermore, being a practicing independent thinker, I regard the BOD as a representation of everything I fight against. Yet, I do acknowledge that this body indeed represents the community of Jews in Britain. I do understand as well that the majority of Jews in Britain and around the world do support Zionism. This is indeed very sad and rather concerning. Yet, far more concerning, is the fact that IJV are not exactly against Israel or Zionism. Like the BOD, they do believe in the right of the Jews to live in peace in Palestine. In their favour it must be said that though they are in favour of the Idea of Jewish state, they want it to be different. They believe in the possibility of morally orientated colonialism in which the colonialists (those who live in Tel Aviv) and the ethnically cleansed (those who live in Gaza, for instance) live in 'peace' side by side.

 

On the face of it, an internal Jewish dispute between two Zionist synagogues shouldn't really become one of the top priorities of British society. This debate should have taken place on the very yellow pages of the Jewish Chronicle. Yet, the IJV wanted to get the British public on their side. How did they do it? They have peppered their declaration with some humanist post-colonial terminology and planted the word Palestine in every other sentence. It quite important to mention that in the declaration itself the BOD is not mentioned even once. Palestine, on the other hand, is mentioned six times.

 

Out of the five principles presented by the IJV, three are dedicated to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The author of the declaration must be aware that the British people are gradually becoming more and more aware of the emerging level of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian population. It is rather crucial to emphasize that while the IJV insists upon conveying an image of commitment to the Palestinian issue, they clearly refrain from any substantial ethical commitment to Palestine, Palestinians or humanism. The IJV do not extend beyond the Israeli Left's Peace-Now rhetoric. Though, they refer to human rights, they clearly refrain from mentioning the Palestinian right of return. They are succumbing to the old leftist Zionist trick; they identify the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as its resolution, with the occupation and its demise. This is obviously a lie and the authors of the IJV declaration are fully conscious of this lie. I would like to believe that more than a few of the IJV signatories are not aware of the sophisticated manipulative document they have signed on.

 

Once again, the truth must be said. The Palestinian cause is largely about the right of return and a solution to the refugee problem. Though the end of occupation is indeed a necessity, it won't secure any peace deal. By avoiding the Palestinian cause, the IJV are guilty of dismissing the elementary rights of Palestinians to live on their own land. The IJV may momentarily score some points by taking the Palestinians for a ride while not committing themselves to their real cause. Unfortunately, such an ethical momentum that could be used as a general awakening for Jews was wasted on another exercise in a left Zionist fig leaf operation.

 

Learning from the success of Ben Gurion and his version of Zionism, I would like to make a suggestion to my Palestinian brothers and sisters. It really doesn't matter what some Jews say, it matters what the Palestinians do. From the looks of it, the decision to create a Unity Government seems like a positive step forward.

 

Gilad Atzmon  can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk

 

www.gilad.co.uk

 

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=19508

The Meanness of Separation : Politics and Apartheid

 

By NEWTON GARVER

Newton Garver is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at University at Buffalo. An expanded edition of his book Limits of Power: Some Friendly Reminders (2005) will be published this spring by Center Working Papers.

 

CounterPunch    February 8, 2007

 

"Now everyone is prouder--and poorer."

 

--Orhan Pamuk

 

Jimmy Carter's most recent book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, has raised a storm of criticism from the Derschowitz-AIPAC wing of American Judaism, stung by his even-handed recounting of events and conversations, as well as his straightforward presentation of the failure to implement UN Security Council resolutions. From the criticism one might think that in the book Carter places all the blame on the Israelis, but that is far from the case. There is, in fact, at least one point (page 13) where he seems unbalanced in the other direction, citing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as among continuing impediments to peace. Fair enough. But is not the rise of Jewish fundamentalism also a continuing impediment, responsible for the persistence and intransigence of settlement expansion, the massacre in the mosque in Hebron, and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin? Of course not every detail can be included. The book is impressive for its plain speaking, its illumination of the big picture, Carter's personal history in the discussions, and its careful attention to accuracy about the facts.

 

One of the features of Carter's style is to recount sympathetically and without judgment conversations he has had with key figures on all sides to the various controversies. It is this unjudgmental reporting that must be so infuriating to the AIPAC-Derschowitz crowd. One can readily understand that the facts and stories about what has happened and continues to happen in the supposedly Arab land of the West Bank and Gaza are on their face outrageous-unless the victims are themselves to blame for their distress. Carter refrains from expressing outrage, keeping instead his focus on the need for peace and reconciliation. But it is a feature of partisans and their pride in their side to regard evenhanded unjudgmental presentations as themselves intrinsically outrageous.

 

But what about Carter's opposition between peace and apartheid? Here there perhaps lies a perspective on the world that would be more alarming to world leaders than the even-handedness about Palestine. Does Carter mean to suggest that there can never be peace through apartheid? Is not the idea that you get peace through separation the principle behind a whole host of political sacred cows, including border fences, gated communities, bloated prisons, boycotts and blockades? Does enforced and ideologically buttressed separation lead to the sort of partisan pride that Pamuk has in mind, in the words above that he puts into the mouth of one of the wise minor figures in his recent novel?

 

Consider our prisons, for example. People are generally sent to prison for offenses against civil order, that is for having upset the peace of our society. One option might be to spend time and money to rehabilitate them, with the underlying thought that punishment is something the offender needs in order to regain his or her place in society (Simone Weil's idea), so that peace is regained by a kind of reconciliation. In practice, however, we lock them up and throw away the key, with the underlying thought that it is separation rather than reconciliation or integration that will bring peace. After all, we are so far superior to those criminals!! Isn't that why politicians support life sentences without the chance of parole, and imprisonment of the world's largest percentage of our own citizens? Has any sheriff or governor in recent history won office by promising to integrate convicted offenders more rapidly into society? One could raise similar questions about each of the other sacred cows mentioned above. And in each case there is partisan pride on at least one side.

 

The US is not only building a wall to separate us from Mexico but is also maintaining other walls to separate us from Cuba, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, often with the cooperation of wall-builders on the other side. The world might not call it peace, but our politicians think it means peace for ourselves, isolated from the miscreants who disdain our leadership and our good offices. And of course these separations are based on, and in turn reinforce, our sense of being the party of democracy and freedom, much superior to those brutal dictatorships, and better off isolated from them. Peace through apartheid. Just what Carter rules out, by implicit definition it seems, in his title.

 

Why does Carter disdain peace through separation, so much that he leaves it out of account? Could it be because he addresses this problem, as well as others, with his focus on the needs of government and the requirements of welfare rather than the ideas and tools of politcs?

 

Government is often confused with politics, but they are worlds apart. The aim of government is stability and prosperity, for which peace and tranquility are very helpful, if not necessary. The aim of politics is control and domination, for which crisis and war are convenient, and sometimes indispensable. Our elections are intensely political, since they concern who will be in power and best able to dominate the affairs of government. Sometimes those in power give us decent government. At other times mediocrity is perpetuated because there is a war, and the emergency powers of the commander-in-chief attracts support that overcomes political opposition. Carl Schmitt, one of the profound thinkers of the twentieth century, pointed out in The Concept of the Political that politics begins with a distinction between friends and enemies-a neglected insight that is confirmed over and over, both domestically and internationally. Politicians in the Middle East know who their enemies are, and they refuse to talk with them, just as Schmitt would expect. So, too, Bush refuses to talk with Iran or Syria, arbitrarily, but definitively, counting them as enemies. As elsewhere, the most successful Israeli and Palestinian politicians are fearmongers, reinforcing the walls of separation. There is little hope for peace along the lines that politics inhabits. Carter, without saying so, seeks to refocus the issues in terms of government and the welfare of people rather than politics, and so he speaks of the requirements of government in Palestine and Israel.

 

The thing about peace is that no one can be in control, because cooperation is required. Peace is a normal consequence of good government, and it can be achieved through negotiation, when there are legitimate and reliable negotiating partners; but it can no more come through politics than it can be achieved through apartheid.

 

In the work of Aristotle, politics just means government, but the words diverge sharply in our current discourse. Schmitt has his finger on the pulse of contemporary discourse. Because politics thrives on distinctions between friends and enemies, and enemies (unlike mere adversaries) can never become part of our community, politics entails apartheid. Carter could just as well have called his book, Palestine Peace or Politics. No doubt a different controversy would then have ensued, touching a wider range of issues. Carter's title is better suited to keeping the focus on Palestine. But the close interdependence between apartheid and partisan politics should not be forgotten.

 

Carter's message is one of hope, not fear, as is characteristic of steps toward peace and prosperity. Such a message goes contrary to partisan politics, as well as to apartheid. In a previous article ("Decider vs. Negotiator," I pointed out that there are many real life circumstances in which nice guys finish first, and meanness leads to impoverishment. In the context of that discussion, apartheid, or enforced and ideologically buttressed separation, together with the partisan politics that supports it, count as one prominent form of meanness, and one cause of the continuing public impoverishment.

 

http://www.counterpunch.com/garver02092007.html

Elie Wiesel says he escaped kidnap attempt in U.S. hotel

By Shlomo Shamir,

 

Haaretz    Sat., February 10, 2007

Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told Haaretz on Thursday he escaped a kidnap attempt in a San Francisco hotel last week.

 

Wiesel, 78, whose novels deal with his experience as a Holocaust survivor, said he was grabbed by a stranger in an elevator at the hotel he was staying at for a peace conference and ordered to follow at the risk of violence.

 

In response, Wiesel called for help and the man fled.

 

Police asked Wiesel to keep the event under wraps until progress was made in the investigation.

 

According to San Francisco Police Sgt. Neville Gittens, a man approached
Wiesel, the author of Night, a memoir chronicling his time in a concentration camp, in an elevator and requested an interview with the author on the evening of Feb. 1 at the Argent Hotel.

 

When Wiesel consented to talk in the hotel's lobby, the man insisted it be done in a hotel room and dragged the 78-year-old off the elevator on the sixth floor, Gittens said. The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream, and Wiesel went to the lobby and called police.

 

Gittens said police are investigating the incident as a crime. Wiesel could not be immediately reached for comment at Boston University, where he teaches, or through his institute in New York.

 

A driver's license in the name of Harry Hunt, a member of a Holocaust denial group, was found in a car parked near the hotel. Hunt has not been located since the event.

 

A posting on a virulent anti-Semitic Web site Tuesday by a person identifying himself as Eric Hunt claimed responsibility.

 

"I had planned to bring Wiesel to my hotel room, where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, 'Night,' is almost entirely fictitious," Hunt wrote on the site. The poster also said "I had been trailing Wiesel for weeks and had hoped to get Wiesel into my custody, with a cornered Wiesel finally forced to state the truth on videotape."

 

Gittens said investigators were aware of the posting and declined to comment further on the investigation.

 

The anti-Semitic Web site was disabled late Friday. It is registered to Andrew Winkler in North Sydney, Australia.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824083.html

Critic of Islam Finds New Home in U.S.

By WILLIAM C. MANN

Associated Press     Saturday February 10, 2007 7:16 AM

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - As a child, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled violence in Somalia with her family. As an adult she fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage. She left her adopted Holland after she was caught up in political turmoil and had her life threatened. Now Hirsi Ali - a brave critic of Islam to her supporters, a bigot to her critics - has found refuge in the intellectual bastion of leading U.S. conservatives.

 

Hirsi Ali joined the American Enterprise Institute last September, after a sometimes stormy 14 years in the Netherlands, where she was a member of parliament and became a central figure in two events that jolted the nation.

 

First, after she wrote a script for a film that depicted naked women with Quranic verses scrawled on their bodies, a Dutch-born Muslim gunned down the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh. A letter threatening Hirsi Ali was left on a knife plunged into van Gogh's chest.

 

Next, a fight within Hirsi Ali's political party over her Dutch citizenship brought down the government.

 

These days, Hirsi Ali is promoting her autobiography, ``Infidel.'' It gives a graphic account of how she rejected her faith and the violence she says was inflicted on her in the name of Islam.

 

``I'm an apostate. That's why the book is called 'Infidel,''' she said in a telephone interview from New York.

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations thinks Hirsi Ali's campaign amounts to slander and bigotry.

 

``We believe that contributes to a growing level of Muslim hatred in America,'' said the council's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper. ``It is unfortunate that she had to bring that kind of hate from Europe to the United States.''

 

Her new colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute laud Ali Hirsi as a brave voice taking on a taboo subject.

 

``She's very original, a very courageous thinker, and she has independence of mind,'' said Christina Hoff Sommers, an institute fellow who specializes, among other things, in feminism.

 

At the institute, Hirsi Ali's studies will involve Islam and women: the relationship between the West and Islam; women's rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe.

 

Many institute scholars have had a close relationship with the Bush administration. Among its senior fellows are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

It may seem like odd company for a woman born in a Mogadishu hospital 37 years ago.

 

``I've been accused of selling out,'' she said. ``I've been told, 'You're hanging the dirty laundry outside.'''

 

Ali Hirsi's book provides a graphic account of how her grandmother had her subjected to genital mutilation, sometimes called female circumcision, when she was 5 years old. The practice began in Africa, before Islam, but some African Muslim societies still see it as a requirement of religion.

 

She also describes a time when she was a teenager in Kenya, a majority Christian country with many Muslim Somali refugees, and a Quran teacher cracked her skull after she challenged his insistence that students write Quranic verses on wooden boards and memorize them.

 

``I started to call him uncivilized and backward and said he lived in the time of ignorance before Islam had come around and this was an outrageous system,'' she said. The man bashed her head against the wall.

 

She lied to be accepted as a refugee in Holland, became a Dutch citizen, graduated from prestigious Leiden University and won a seat in the Dutch parliament for a party that was tough on immigration. She became known as a firebrand.

 

That led to her collaboration with van Gogh on the short television movie, ``Submission.'' In 2004, a man enraged by the movie shot van Gogh seven times and slit his throat on an Amsterdam street, leaving the note threatening Hirsi Ali.

 

Her lie when she entered the country - she used an assumed name - caught up with her last year. By that time her falsehood was widely known, even to her good friend Rita Verdonk, the immigration minister. Because of a notorious similar case in which Verdonk expelled a young woman, she came under pressure to cancel Hirsi Ali's citizenship. She did, and the six members of the government's smallest coalition party resigned in protest. The government fell, although Verdonk had used a technicality to restore Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship.

 

Considering van Gogh's death, and her continuing outspokenness about Islam, Hirsi Ali said she no longer can feel safe without bodyguards in the presence of even moderate Muslims.

 

Unlike many world leaders, including Bush, who say Muslim terrorists are distorting the peaceful Islamic religion, Hirsi Ali said the terrorists in large part have truth on their side: The violence is in the Quran and the hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, she said.

 

Islam today, she said, ``is not my grandmother's amulet-wearing, superstitious sort of Islam that is just comforting for the believer.'' Today's Islam sees the world as its enemy, she said. ``And you wage war against your enemies.''

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Hooper contends that she exaggerates to further her agenda.

 

``She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit,'' he said.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6406690,00.html

South African trade union calls for boycott in fresh solidarity declaration

Worldwide Activism, The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, February 10th, 2007

 

The Food and Allied Workers' Union (FAWU) has condemned three major South African food stores - Shoprite Checkers, Pick 'n Pay and Fruit and Veg - for their import of agricultural produce from Israel.

 

In a press statement released on 23 January the Union state:

 

"We are appalled at the insensitivity towards the plight of the Palestinian people by the procurement of supplies from an oppressive, apartheid country like Israel. It seems like rubbing salt in the wounds of Palestinians to procure supplies.

 

Citing the continuing imports of avocado pears from Israel, the press statement goes on to state that:

 

"We are convinced that the import of these goods are in contravention of the spirit of various International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.

 

"We call on the above retailers to immediately cease importing produce from Israel . Whilst we are glad about the number of locally procured goods, we feel that stores like yourselves could easily procure these "out of season" goods from other countries, even if it means paying a slightly higher price. According to figures quoted by Shoprite Group Managing Director, Brian Weyers, the store imports 1,12% of total imported produce from Israel. Being a relatively small percentage, it should therefore not make a huge difference to import from other countries who do not oppress.

 

"Retailers such as yourselves should not have to wait for formal trade agreements by e.g. the UN or South African government to behave in a morally acceptable manner by rejecting produce from oppressive countries like Israel. In fact, experience in the apartheid South Africa era should have taught us to set the standard when it comes to condemning racist, oppressive behaviour."

 

The Call echoes some of the appeals made in recent months from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a federation of numerous trade unions and is based in the spirit of the international solidarity which marked global anti-apartheid boycotts and sanctions in the 1970s and 80s.

 

 

http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1400.shtml

FBI Investigation of AIPAC Reportedly Has Been "Expanded"

by Andrew I. Killgore

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs which is published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. He gets featured on Media Monitors Network (MMN) with the courtesy of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Media Monitors Network   Friday February 09 2007

 

"Time described the Harman/AIPAC investigation as a "spin-off" of the investigation that led to the charges against Rosen and Weissman, as well as to a 12-and-a-half year prison sentence against Larry Franklin. The former Pentagon Iran specialist pleaded guilty to improper disclosure of classified information about the Middle East to the two AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn were indicted for passing it on to a journalist and to a foreign government—in the words of Time magazine, "believed to be" Israel."

 

In 1999 the FBI began an investigation of Steve Rosen, foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Israel lobby's Iran specialist, Keith Weissman. The two AIPAC wheeler-dealers were indicted on Aug. 4, 2005 under the seldom-used Espionage Act. Since then their trial date has been postponed several times, but now seems likely to begin in early 2007 in Alexandria, at the Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia.

 

Meanwhile, across the Potomoc in Washington, DC, another sensational case involving AIPAC has surfaced. According to the Oct. 20 issue of Time magazine, the Department of Justice and the FBI have an "ongoing" investigation into whether Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and AIPAC arranged for wealthy donors to lobby House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (also D-CA) on Harman's behalf, and whether in return Harman agreed to help persuade the Bush administration to go lighter on Rosen and Weissman.

 

Time described the Harman/AIPAC investigation as a "spin-off" of the investigation that led to the charges against Rosen and Weissman, as well as to a 12-and-a-half year prison sentence against Larry Franklin. The former Pentagon Iran specialist pleaded guilty to improper disclosure of classified information about the Middle East to the two AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn were indicted for passing it on to a journalist and to a foreign government—in the words of Time magazine, "believed to be" Israel.

 

Relations between the neocon-ish Harman and the House Democratic leader soured when Harman learned that Pelosi planned not to reappoint her to the House Intelligence Committee. As the committee's ranking minority member, Harman stood to become chair if the Democrats won the House in the November elections.

 

The spurned Harman embarked on an aggressive campaign to persuade Pelosi to reappoint her. According to Time, the alternative LA Weekly reported that Harman "had some major contributors call Pelosi to impress on her the importance of keeping her as head of the House Intelligence Committee. These tactics did not endear Harman to Pelosi."

 

Among those who called Pelosi on Harman's behalf, according to Time, was billionaire Zionist Haim Saban.

 

Harman has hired GOP super lawyer Ted Olson, a former solicitor general, because, Olson told Time, "she is not aware of any such [FBI] investigation, does not believe it is occurring and wanted to make sure you and your editors know that as far as she knows, that's not true…No one from the Justice Department has contacted her."

 

The New York Times of Oct. 24 and the following day's Washington Post carried articles on the AIPAC/Harman affair, although both denigrated the matter. The Jewish Forward of Oct. 27, however, saying the investigation has been "expanded," described the controversy as "explosive."

 

http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/40754/

Hamas deals swift blow to peace deal hopes

· We will never recognise Israel, says Gaza leader
· Mecca deal brings hostile reaction in Jerusalem

 

Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian   Saturday February 10, 2007

 

Renewed hopes for a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process suffered an early blow yesterday when the Palestinian movement Hamas pledged it would never recognise Israel, only hours after signing a Saudi-backed national unity agreement to help stave off an incipient civil war.

 

Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas leader in Gaza, brushed aside any room for ambiguity. He told Reuters: "We will never recognise Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination."

 

This unequivocal language followed overnight celebrations in Gaza and the West Bank, and punctured a rare burst of cautious optimism about Thursday's power-sharing deal between the Islamists of Hamas and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Arab hopes had focused on ending both the internal crisis and the international boycott in force since Hamas won last year's elections. The consequences have included the siege of Gaza, rocket attacks on Israel, war in Lebanon and hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israelis, as well as nearly 100 victims of internecine fighting. Fifteen Israelis died during the same period. The peace process disappeared and Iranian influence in the region increased.

 

The Mecca agreement should make it harder for Israel to resist pressure to end the sanctions. Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas will remain prime minister, but Salam Fayyad, admired in the US and Europe, is designated finance minister, a safe pair of hands to administer vital foreign assistance. The interior minister, running the security forces, will be an independent figure in the more moderate new government.

 

Optimism may be unwarranted because the agreement made no mention of recognising Israel, a requirement demanded by Israel itself and laid down by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers - the UN, EU, US and Russia - for lifting the sanctions. Mr Abbas had wanted a clear statement that the new government would be "committed" to past peace accords, as a formula offering at least implicit recognition of Israel from Hamas.

 

But a letter from Mr Abbas called on the Islamist movement to "abide by the interests of the Palestinian people" and "respect international law and agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation". That includes the 1993 Israeli-PLO Oslo agreement and the 2002 Arab League peace plan. Progress depends on fudges like this being ignored so that Mr Abbas is given a mandate to negotiate with Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, while Hamas leaders look the other way.

 

Movement also depends on Israel pragmatically ignoring the Hamas presence - effectively accepting that Mr Abbas's deeds matter more than Islamist words.

 

Tzahi Hanegbi, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Israeli parliament, said Mr Abbas had "awarded a significant victory to Hamas".

 

"The chance of advancing an effective initiative and an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has receded."

 

The US said the terms of the agreement had to be accepted "clearly and credibly" while the EU said it would study it "in a positive but cautious manner". France welcomed it while Britain called the accord "interesting".

 

Pressure has been mounting in recent weeks for a review of the EU position on sanctions that have caused ordinary Palestinians to suffer while neither weakening nor changing Hamas.

 

Nabil Amr, an aide to Mr Abbas, told Reuters: "I cannot say, and we don't have great expectations, that this agreement will completely end the siege, but it will pave the way to end it."

 

Palestinians should quickly feel the benefit of Saudi funding, clearing the way for full salary payments for public sector employees for the first time since Hamas came to power. Israel looks likely to continue withholding tax revenues.

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

 

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites are well advanced

 

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian    Saturday February 10, 2007

 

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

 

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

 

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

 

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

 

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

 

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

 

Deployment

 

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

 

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

 

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

 

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

 

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

 

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

 

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

 

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

 

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

 

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

 

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

 

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

 

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

 

Opposition support

 

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

 

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

 

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

 

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

 

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

 

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

 

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

 

War of words

 

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

 

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

 

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

 

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

 

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Robert Fisk: Conspiracy of silence in the Arab world

Where are the sheikhs when the Iraqi dead are fished out of the Tigris?

Independent   10 February 2007

 

Could Rifaat al-Assad's day in court be growing closer? Yes, Rifaat - or Uncle Rifaat to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria - the man whose brother Hafez hurled him from Damascus after he tried to use his special forces troops to stage a coup. They were the same special forces who crushed the Islamist rebellion in Hama in February 1982, slaughtering up to - well, a few thousand, according to the regime, at least 10,000 according to Fisk (who was there) and up 20,000 if you believe The New York Times (which I generally don't).

 

Either way, I've always regarded it as a war crime, along with the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut by Israel's Lebanese militia allies a few months later. Ariel Sharon, who was held personally responsible by Israel's own court of enquiry, is an unindicted war criminal. So is Rifaat.

 

That's why the faintest breeze blew through my fax machine this week when I received a letter sent to the UN Secretary General by Malik al-Abdeh, head of the London-based Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. Abdeh left his Syrian town of Zabadani before the Hama massacres - he works now as an IT consultant for a multinational - so he's hardly able to breathe the air of Sister Syria. But then again nor can Rifaat, who languishes - complete with bodyguards - in that nice EU island of refuge called Marbella. And refuge he probably needs. Because Abdeh is asking the UN to institute an enquiry into the Hama bloodbath in the same way that it is powering along with its tribunal into the murder almost two years ago of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

 

Ouch. In the letter Abdeh describes how "warplanes and tanks levelled whole districts of the city (of Hama) ... the evidence clearly suggests that government forces made no distinction between armed insurgents and unarmed civilians ... the assault on the city represents a clear act of war crimes and murder on a mass scale". The letter has now been passed to the UN's legal head, Nicolas Michel, who is also involved in the Hariri murder case. The sacred name of Rifaat has not been mentioned in the letter but it specifically demands that "those who are responsible should be held accountable and charged...".

 

Now, of course, there are a few discrepancies in the facts. The Syrians did not use poison gas in Hama, as Abdeh claims. They certainly did level whole areas of the city - they are still level today, although a hotel has been built over one devastated district - and when Rifaat's thugs combed through the ruins later, they executed any civilians who couldn't account for their presence.

 

But of course, the Hama uprising was also a Sunni Muslim insurrection and the insurgents had murdered entire families of Baath party officials, sometimes by chopping off their heads. In underground tunnels, Muslim girls had exploded themselves among Syrian troops - they were among the Middle East's first suicide bombers although we didn't appreciate that then. And the Americans were not at all unhappy that this Islamist insurgency had been crushed by Uncle Rifaat. Readers will not need any allusion to modern and equally terrible events involving Sunni insurgents to the east of Syria. And since the Americans are getting pretty efficient at killing civilians along with gunmen, I have a dark suspicion that there won't be any great enthusiasm in Washington for a prosecution over Hama.

 

But still... What strikes me is not so much the force of Abdeh's letter but that it was written at all. When the Hama massacre occurred, neighbouring Arab states were silent. Although the Sunni prelates of the city called for a religious war, their fellow clerics in Damascus - and, indeed, in Beirut - were silent. Just as the imams and scholars of Islam were silent when the Algerians began to slaughter each other in a welter of head-chopping and security force executions in the 1990s.

 

Just as they are silent now over the mutual killings in Iraq. Sure, the mass killings of Iraq would not have occurred if we hadn't invaded the country. And I do suspect a few "hidden hands" behind the civil conflict in a nation which never before broke apart. In Algeria, the French spent a lot of time in the early 1960s persuading - quite successfully - their FLN and ALN enemies to murder each other. But where are the sheikhs of Al-Azhar and the great Arabian kingdoms when the Iraqi dead are fished out of the Tigris and cut down in their thousands in Baghdad, Kerbala, Baquba? They, too, are silent.

 

Not a word of criticism. Not a hint of concern. Not a scintilla (an Enoch Powell word, this) of sympathy. An Israeli bombardment of Lebanon? Even an Israeli invasion? That's a war crime - and the Arabs are right, the Israelis do commit war crimes. I saw the evidence of quite a few last summer. But when does Arab blood become less sacred? Why, when it is shed by Arabs. It's not just a failure of self-criticism in the Arab world. In a landscape ruled by monsters whom we in the West have long supported, criticism of any kind is a dodgy undertaking. But can there not be one small sermon of reprobation for what Iraqi Muslims are doing to Iraqi Muslims?

 

Of course, but the real problem the Arabs now face is that their lands have been overrun and effectively occupied by Western armies. I worked out a few weeks ago that, per head of population - and the world was smaller in the 12th century - there are now about 22 times more Western soldiers in Muslim lands than there were at the time of the Crusades. How do you strike back at these legions and drive them out? Brutally and most terribly, the Iraqis have shown how. I used to say the future of the Bush administration will be decided in Iraq, not in Washington. And this now appears to be true.

 

So what should we do? Allow the Rifaats of this world to go on enjoying Marbella? And the killers of Hariri go free? And the Arabs remain silent in the face of the shameful atrocities which their brother Muslims have also committed? I'll take a bet that Rifaat will be safe from the UN lads. In Iraq right now, he'd be on "our" side, wouldn't he, battling the Islamic insurgency as he did in Hama? And that, I fear, is the problem. We are all Rifaats now.

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2255669.ece

Charlize angers US

News24.com 09/02/2007 21:17  - (SA) 

 

Charles Smith,

Beeld

Washington - Charlize Theron has upset Americans with comments made during a CNN interview in which she compared America and Cuba with regards to the restrictions placed on human freedom.

 

Theron this week made her debut as a movie producer with the movie East of Havana, a documentary film about rap singers in Cuba.

 

After the interview, newspapers published headlines referring to her as a "dumb blonde" and articles wondered whether she was just another Hollywood left-winger.

 

The New York Daily News wrote an article with the heading "Just another pretty face".

 

The article said that it was accepted that Charlize Theron was blonde and that now it had been proven that she was stupid as well.

 

Most Americans however, felt she had been treated unfairly by journalist Rick Sanchez who refused to let go of the subject while talking about the movie. There were also claims that she was quoted out of context.

 

Theron was criticised for saying that there was a lack of freedom in America. She said that TV reporters in the US were fired for commenting about the US war, just like rap singers in Cuba had to show their lyrics before they were allowed to perform.

 

Theron also said she loved America, however, and this is why she lived in the US.

 

http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Celebrities/0,9294,2-1225-2108_2067208,00.html

Robert Fisk : Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

The Independent   02/09/07

 

 For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

 

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

 

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

 

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

 

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

 

Al-Jeelani suggests the United Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.

 

Then come the conditions:

 

* The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".

 

* Recognition "of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people".

 

* An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.

 

* The negotiations to take place in public.

 

* The resistance "must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades".

 

* The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.

 

It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance" represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.

 

Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."

 

He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.

 

But there are other points which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi Islamic Army.

 

They call, for example, for the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations - something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.

 

The terms also include the legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time - and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed army.

 

Al-Jeelani described President George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation ...

 

"The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq."

 

There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people".

 

It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.

 

What is unclear, of course, is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of al-Qa'ida.

 

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Morocco hopes to host US African Command

Middle East Newsline   Fri, 09 Feb 2007

 

RABAT, Morocco [MENL] -- Morocco hopes to host the new U.S. military command planned for Africa.

 

Officials said the North African kingdom intends to offer a home to the new African Command as part of expanded military cooperation with the United States. They said Morocco represents the most stable country on the African continent.

 

"We have the infrastructure as well as the society that accepts foreigners," an official said. "It would be a good choice and we hope to discuss this seriously with our friends in Washington."

 

On Feb. 6, the Defense Department announced a new U.S. Africa Command, known as Africom. The command would coordinate virtually all of the U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.

 

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2007/february/02_09_4.html