Speciale zitting Knesset over delingsplan 1947 geboycot door Arabische Knessetleden

De herdenking van 60 jaar VN delingsplan voor het mandaatgebied vormde voor de Israëlische politici een aanleiding om te evalueren waar men stond met betrekking tot de tweestatenoplossing en het herstarte vredesproces. Ook de Arabische Knessetleden maakten duidelijk waar zij staan in hun relatie tot de staat Israël, en bleven massaal weg.

 

Olmert toont zich verbluffend toegefelijk naar de Palestijnen, en lijkt bijna wanhopig in zijn pogingen het Israëlische publiek rijp te maken voor zware compromissen. Ik weet niet goed of het me moet spijten dat Olmert te weinig aanzien heeft om daarin te kunnen slagen, want zelfs voor mijn linkse, vredeminnende hart loopt hij wat te hard van stapel. Wat te denken van:

 

Olmert stressed that the government would continue to "fight for the status of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel."

 

Niet: "Jeruzalem is onze hoofdstad en zal dat altijd blijven, daar moeten de Palestijnen maar mee leren leven", of zelfs: "Jeruzalem als gedeelde hoofdstad van twee staten kan een lichtend symbool worden van verzoening tussen ons en onze buurvolken", maar: "Jongens, ik doe mijn best om Jeruzalem voor ons te behouden, maar ik kan niets beloven..."

 

Dit staat in schril contrast met de Palestijnse opstelling: het Palestijnse parlement is bezig een wet aan te nemen die het tot hoogverraad maakt om over een compromis betreffende Jeruzalem te onderhandelen. (Klik maar op de link, ik zou het zelf anders ook niet geloven!)

 

Dit gaat lekker, jongens. Ik voorzie een Palestijnse staat in 2068...

 

 

Wouter

_________________

Haaretz / Last update - 22:01 03/12/2007

Most Arab MKs boycott special Knesset session commemorating partition plan

By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930703.html

Arab MKs boycotted Monday a special Knesset session commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1947 United Nations decision to partition British-mandate Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. (Click here for Haaretz special coverage of the anniversary)

The decision effectively gave international backing to the creation of the State of Israel.

All but one Arab MK - Nadia Hilou of Labor - decided not to attend the session, including her fellow party member Culture and Sport Minister Ghaleb Majadele.

More than a third of MKs were absent during the session, including Kadima MK Ruhama Avraham, who is the minister charged with organizing Israel's 60th Independence Day celebrations in the spring, and Communications Minister Ariel Atias of Shas.

In his address to the plenum, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, made the right decision in agreeing to partition. "My father opposed partition and was wrong," Olmert said. "Ben-Gurion was right - there was a need to accept the possible.

"The choice, both 60 years ago and today, is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel," the prime minister continued. "That is the choice we are faced with today - the existence of two nation-states, Israel and Palestine, in the Land of Israel."

Olmert stressed that the government would continued to "fight for the status of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel."

"I don't underestimate the difficulties, I don't diminish the threats, and I will never compromise on Israel's security," he said. "But as long as there remains even a chance of peace, I will exhaust it fully."

Netanyahu: Peace that stems from a strong Israel takes precedence over accords

The Head of the Opposition, Likud MK Benjamin Netanyahu, said that "it is under question whether we'll have a real partner for real peace."

"Arab leaders cannot demand to set the clock back as if nothing has happened. They cannot urge others to accept the decision [on partition] that they themselves rejected." He quoted Ben-Gurion, who said shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel that "the partition borders are no more."

Netanyahu said that "it was not the UN resolution that prompted the establishment of the state - it just recognized the historic right of the people of Israel to return to its homeland. This right would not have been fulfilled if it was not for the generations-long longings of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel, the continuous presence of Jews here throughout the years, and 60 years of extensive settlement and cultivation prior to the resolution.

"Only when our neighbors realized that Israel is a fait accompli," Netanyahu said, "were they willing to pursue peace with us. That's why I was surprised and amazed to hear the prime minister say that unless the two-state solution is achieved, Israel is done for," he said.

Netanyahu made a personal appeal to the prime minister: "Prime minister, Israel will never be done for. Our existence is not dependant on the willingness of the Palestinians to make peace, but on our ability to defend our right to live in this country. Our existence must not depend on their consent. No government has agreed to this in the past, and none will in the future. Our destiny will be determined strictly by us, not by anyone else, because in the Middle East peace and security are intertwined, and peace that stems from a strong Israel takes precedence over peace agreements. Whoever ignores that is left with neither security nor peace."

Livni: Israel's democracy and Jewish essence are not contradictory

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: "I am not here to argue on rights and on who is right, I'm here to address my counterparts in the Arab world and say that the right thing to do is to be attuned to our children's right to live in peace and mutual respect, in accordance with the values which I hope all the nations of our region share."

Livni reiterated her commitment to the two-state solution. She said that the partition plan did not induce the conflict, but was rather meant to solve it. "It did not determine who is right, but outlined a path for peace," she said, adding that the resolution that was rejected by the Arab world is the one that the Palestinians should pursue. "On the day of the creation of our state, which you call the Nakba - the catastrophe, the State of Israel seeks peace and good neighborliness with its neighboring countries," Livni emphasized.

"We extend our hand toward peace with the Arab and Muslim world," Livni said. She called on the Arab residents of Israel to take part in the establishment of the State of Israel. "Israel's democracy and Jewish essence are not contradictory," she said. "We should work toward a national home for the Jewish people in Israel and a national home in Palestine for the Palestinian people wherever they are - the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and refugee camps in Arab states," she said," as long as the word Nakba would be removed from the Palestinian vocabulary in relation to the State of Israel."

Palestijns parlement neemt wet aan tegen compromis over Jeruzalem

De nieuwe Palestijnse wet definiëert concessies over Jeruzalem als hoogverraad, en eenieder die de wet overtreedt wordt vervolgd.

Hoewel veel Fatah leden de sessie van het Palestijnse parlement boycotten, zijn zij het wel eens met deze wet:

 

However, many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city.

 

 

Dat betekent dus ook, voor de duidelijkheid, dat het een vorm van hoogverraad is om Joodse rechten in de Oude Stad, zoals de Klaagmuur en het Joodse kwartier te erkennen. De wet moet nog door Abbas worden goedgekeurd, maar dat hoeft niet zo'n probleem te zijn:

 

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top aide to Abbas, said in response that, as far as the PA was concerned, Jerusalem was a "red line" that can't be crossed.

Abbas told supporters in Ramallah Thursday that he did not go to Annapolis to make concessions. "There are some people who are trying to distort the truth," he said. "They are saying that we went to Annapolis to sell our cause, negotiate and sign agreements. But we went there to convey our principle and fixed positions."

 

 

Misschien is dit wel een van de redenen waarom vredesonderhandelingen niet tot een oplossing van het conflict leiden. Als je niet bereid bent enige concessies te doen, als je je eigen rechten als absoluut en on-onderhandelbaar ziet, dan valt er niet veel te bespreken. Het probleem is dat 'fixed positions'  bepaalde rechten van de Joden uitsluiten, zoals hun recht op zelfbeschikking.

 

 

Ratna

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PLC passes law to make any concessions on J'lem illegal

Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 6, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847272927&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council Thursday passed a law that makes any concessions on Jerusalem illegal.

The law, which was approved by first reading, also defines such concessions as a crime of high treason.

Presented by Hamas legislator Ahmed Abu Halbiyeh on behalf of two parliamentary committees - the Judicial Committee and the Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, the law is expected to pass in second and third readings in the coming days.

The PLC session was boycotted by many members of the rival Fatah faction in protest against Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last June.

However, many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city.

According to the law, anyone who violates the law would be prosecuted as a traitor.

The new law still requires the approval of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said Ahmed Bahar, acting speaker of the PLC. He said the law would be submitted to Abbas after it passes second and third readings.

The law is intended to embarrass Abbas and ties his hands on the eve of the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on core issues, including the future status of Jerusalem. Hamas officials said Abbas would have no other option but to endorse the law.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top aide to Abbas, said in response that, as far as the PA was concerned, Jerusalem was a "red line" that can't be crossed.

Abbas told supporters in Ramallah Thursday that he did not go to Annapolis to make concessions. "There are some people who are trying to distort the truth," he said. "They are saying that we went to Annapolis to sell our cause, negotiate and sign agreements. But we went there to convey our principle and fixed positions."

Abbas said the Palestinian team to Annapolis faced many "obstacles." He said that these obstacles included demands to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and relinquishing the rights of the Palestinian refugees.

Abbas also revealed that he and his team rejected the idea of establishing a Palestinian state with temporary borders for fear that the borders would one day become permanent.

"The Palestinian people want a state in the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem," he stressed. "We also want a solution to the problem of the refugees in accordance with the Arab peace initiative and United Nations resolution 194."

Abbas reiterated his readiness to talk to Hamas, but only after the Islamist movement relinquishes control over the Gaza Strip. "What Hamas did [in the Gaza Strip] was a disaster for the Palestinians," he said. "This was a black coup that was carried out by the prime minister and interior minister in the deposed [Hamas] government. But we are not opposed to dialogue with Hamas. Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian people."

Abbas' controle over de Westelijke Jordaanoever een optische illusie - munitie prijzen kelderen

De prijs van kogels op de zwarte markt is gedaald, omdat munitie uit de voorraadkamers van de Palestijnse Autoriteit in handen valt van terroristische groepen. De PA krijgt wapens en munitie van onder andere de VS, met als doel de terroristen beter te kunnen bestrijden. Ondanks beweringen van het tegendeel heeft Abbas zijn zaken absoluut niet op orde, en kan overdracht van land en verantwoordelijkheden fatale gevolgen hebben.

 

 

Ratna

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Abbas' West Bank Rule an Optical Illusion
Amir Rappaport Maariv-Hebrew, 30 Nov 07

[Translation and summary by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert - December 4, 2007]

Israel's security services believe that if they were not making arrests in the West Bank every night, it is quite probable that Hamas would overcome Fatah there as it did so easily in Gaza. In practical terms, this means that, to a great extent, Fatah control in the West Bank is an optical illusion. Israel's security services are concerned at clear signs of Hamas strengthening in the West Bank. Even in the Fatah stronghold of "secular" Ramallah, the number of mosques has doubled in recent years as the number of worshippers has increased. At the same time, Israel has been unable to block the large flow of Hamas money to its welfare institutions, which function much better than the failed PA institutions.

Hamas is building up its military capabilities in the West Bank. Its forces are training and building bunkers in cities like Nablus and Kalkilya, while its activists plan attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Given this reality, is there any point in conducting negotiations with the heads of Fatah when the issue being discussed is the transfer of land that Fatah is unable to control without the continued presence of the IDF and the Israel Security Agency (Shabak). Of additional concern are the thousands of rifles and millions of bullets that were brought in from Jordan for the Palestinian police. In recent years, due to intensive IDF activity against weapons smuggling, the price of a bullet had risen to tens of shekels. It has now fallen drastically as ammunition from PA police warehouses finds its way into the hands of terrorists.


--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Christelijke Arabieren zullen verdwijnen uit Palestijnse gebieden

Waarom is hier zo weinig aandacht voor, en waarom horen we in dit opzicht nooit grote woorden als 'etnische zuivering', die "vredesactivisten" zo makkelijk in de mond nemen waar het Israëlische behandeling van de Palestijnen betreft?

 

 

Ratna

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Expert: 'Christian groups in PA to disappear'
Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 4, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546795874&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The ever-dwindling Christian communities living in Palestinian-run territories in the West Bank and Gaza are likely to dissipate completely within the next 15 years as a result of increasing Muslim persecution and maltreatment, an Israeli scholar said Monday.

"The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs," said Justus Reid Weiner, an international human rights lawyer in an address at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he serves as a scholar in residence.

He cited Muslim harassment and persecution as the main cause of the "acute human rights crisis" facing Christian Arabs, and predicted that unless governments or institutions step in to remedy the situation - such as with job opportunities - there will be no more Christian communities living in the Palestinians territories within 15 years, with only a few Western Christians and top clergymen left in the area.

"Christian leaders are being forced to abandon their followers to the forces of radical Islam," Weiner said.

Facing a pernicious mixture of persecution and economic hardships as a result of years of Palestinian violence and Israeli counter-terrorism measures, tens of thousands of Christian Arabs have left the Palestinian territories for a better life in the West, in a continuing exodus which has led some Christian leaders to warn that the faith could be virtually extinct in its birthplace in a matter of decades.

The Palestinian Christian population has dipped to 1.5 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, down from at least 15% a half century ago, according to some estimates.

No one city in the Holy Land is more indicative of the great exodus of Christians than Bethlehem, which fell under full Palestinian control last decade as part of the Oslo Accords.

The town of 30,000 is now less than 20% Christian, after decades when Christians were the majority. Elsewhere in the Palestinian territories, only about 3,000 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, live in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, out of a strongly conservative Muslim population of 1.4 million.

"In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving," he said.

In his address, Weiner pointedly downplayed the effects that Israeli security measures, such as the security barrier being built between Israel and the West Bank, have had on the Christian Arabs living in the West Bank.

The barrier, which is especially conspicuous at the entrance to Bethlehem where it is a concrete wall, is an issue which many Palestinian Christian clerics have pointed to, along with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a central cause of Christian emigration.

Weiner argued there was a "180 degree difference" between the public statements coming out of the mainstream Christian leadership in the Holy Land - who "sing the PA's tune" and blame Israel for all the Christian Arabs' ills - and people's experience on the ground.

"The truth is beginning to come out," he said. "The question is what is being done with the truth."

His comments come just months after a prominent Christian activist, Rami Khader Ayyad, 32, was killed in Gaza.

"For too long the plight of Christian Arabs has been put on the back-burner or ignored altogether," said Rev. Malcolm Hedding, executive director of the International Christian Embassy, a Jerusalem-based evangelical organization.

The Evangelical leader, who has drawn the wrath of Catholic leaders in the Holy Land for his strong support for Israel, said that "power politics" has prevented the major Christian leaders in the Holy Land from speaking out on this issue.

"There is a one-sided debate in which Israel is responsible for everything," he said. "The Christian world needs to stand up and speak out about this."

Al-Azhar universiteitsvoorzitter en ex-moefti van Egypte rechtvaardigt Palestijnse zelfmoordaanslagen

De Palestijnen plegen geen zelfmoordaanslagen uit wanhoop, maar uit eigen vrije wil en overtuiging, aldus een Egyptische universiteitspresident en voormalige moefti.

 

Tegelijkertijd rechtvaardigt hij deze 'martelarenoperaties', omdat Israël zo zwaar bewapend is en de Palestijnen hun land toch moeten kunnen bevrijden.

 

 

Ratna

--------------

 

Ahmad Al-Tayyib, Al-Azhar University President and Former Mufti of Egypt, Justifies Palestinian Suicide Bombings

 

Following is an excerpt from an interview with Al-Azhar University President Ahmad Al-Tayyib, former mufti of Egypt, which aired on Al-Mihwar TV on October 10, 2007:

To view this clip visit: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1621.htm

Ahmad Al-Tayyib:

We do not permit the killing or terrorizing of peaceful people, when two countries, two armies, or two forces confront one another.
This is forbidden, even if the Muslim forces are being defeated. But with regard to Palestine and Israel, this is not the case, and to say otherwise is to confuse things. We are facing a country, which is armed to the teeth with a hellish weapon...

Interviewer:

It has lethal weapons.

Ahmad Al-Tayyib:

Exactly. We are facing tyranny and oppression, while the world watches from the sidelines. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are defenseless and have nothing, and they want to defend their country, their faith, and their homeland. The only method they have is [martyrdom operations], and employing it is very difficult for them. Is it easy for a Palestinian to bring his life to an end? No, it isn't. He too is a human being, who wants to live. What makes him resort to this method? It is not despair, as is claimed by many people who try to interpret martyrdom operations as suicide operation driven by despair. No. That is not true. The Palestinian martyrdom-seeker knows that he is free to go on this operation, in order to please Allah and enter Paradise, in defense of his religion, his country, and his land.

http://www.memritv.org

Eerder vrijgelaten Palestijnse gevangenen doodden 177 Israëli's

Van tijd tot tijd heeft Israël Palestijnse gevangenen vrijgelaten als gebaar van goede wil, in een uitruil tegen gegijzelde Israëli's, of gewoon omdat ze hun straf hadden uitgezeten. Bij een uitruil werden deels ook gevangenen vrijgelaten met 'bloed aan hun handen', dat wil zeggen dat zij (mede) verantwoordelijk waren voor aanslagen waarbij Israëli's omkwamen. 

 

De gevangenen die Israël als gebaar naar de PA vrijlaat, hebben in principe geen bloed aan hun handen, maar waren mogelijk wel betrokken bij mislukte of verhinderde aanslagen. Het is daarom nog maar de vraag of bij hen het risico veel kleiner is dat ze later alsnog slachtoffers maken. Zijn zij na een mislukte aanslag en jaren in een 'Zionistische' gevangenis immers niet extra gemotiveerd om nu wel een geslaagde aanslag te plegen?

 

Het zou interessant zijn de percentages gevangenen van de verschillende categorieën te vergelijken die terugkeren naar het terrorisme. Waarschijnlijk ontlopen ze elkaar niet zoveel. Het grootste nut van het gevangen zetten van Palestijnen die bij gewelddadig verzet betrokken zijn, is wellicht niet zozeer ze te straffen, maar de ergste terroristen een tijd lang van de straat te hebben.     

 

Ratna

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Report: Palestinians released in previous gestures killed 177 Israelis
Nadav Shragai Haaretz 4 December 2007
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930821.html

Palestinian militants, freed in past prisoner releases by Israel, were responsible for at least 30 terror attacks which claimed the lives of 177 Israelis, according to a study published yesterday by Almagor, an organization representing the victims of Palestinian terrorism.

The report's publication came in response to yesterday's release of 429 Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons.

According to the report, 6,912 militants were released between the years 1993 and 1999, and nearly 80 percent of them returned to terrorist activity.

Een Pogrom in Peki'in, Israël

Hoewel er ook tijdens de rellen van 1929 een pogrom had plaatsgevonden, gold het dorp Peki'in in Galilea lange tijd als voorbeeld van vreedzaam samenleven tussen verschillende bevolkingsgroepen in Israël. Het zou zelfs het laatste dorp zijn waar sinds de oudheid onafgebroken Joden hebben gewoond. Uit de meeste Arabische dorpen met kleine Joodse gemeenschappen waren deze gevlucht tijdens diverse onlusten in de eerste helft van de 20ste eeuw.

 

Tijdens onze reis naar Israël afgelopen voorjaar waren we door Elia en Gabriel de Jong uitgenodigd om bij hen langs te komen, maar konden Peki'in helaas niet in ons reisprogramma inplannen. Zij lieten ons weten dat ze, toen ze jaren geleden naar Israël emigreerden, bewust voor dit dorpje hadden gekozen om hun kinderen een 'multiculturele opvoeding' te geven. Een paar maanden geleden namen Gabriels ouders hun huis over, maar moesten hier tot hun ontsteltenis eind oktober een moderne pogrom meemaken. Hun eigen relaas is hier te lezen: Onrust in Galilea.

Hoe het zover heeft kunnen komen blijft nog onduidelijk. Er was onrust over GSM-zendmasten in de omgeving en vermeend stralingsrisico daarvan, er waren schijnbaar ook valse geruchten en opruiing onder de Druzen (de meerderheid in het dorp) en enkele gewelddadige incidenten tegen Joodse inwoners. Een overmacht aan Israëlische politie zou daarna met grof geschut hebben geprobeerd de orde te herstellen en de verantwoordelijken te arresteren, en nadat ze het gebedshuis van de Druzen betraden zou de vlam helemaal in de pan zijn geslagen, waarbij tientallen gewonden vielen en zelfs een poltieagente werd gegijzeld.

 

 

Wouter

_____________________________

 

Last Jewish family leaves Peki'in

 

De Jung family, who emigrated from Holland four months ago, flee Druze village after locals torch their car. All nine Jewish families who used to live in Peki'in leave due to repeated harassment

 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3478336,00.html

 

Goel Beno

Published:

12.03.07, 09:31 / Israel News

 

The last Jewish family to remain in Peki'in after riots shook the Druze village last month, has recently decided to move out as well, after its car was torched last weekend.

 

Ruth and Abel De Jung are the ninth family to leave due to repeated harassment by local residents. The only Jewish resident to remain in the village is Margalit Zinati, whose family has lived in Peki'in for centuries.

 

The De Jungs, both Holocaust survivors, emigrated from Holland to Israel four months ago, and are now considering returning to Holland. In the meantime they are staying with friends, as they currently have no place to live.

Ruth and Abel's son, Gabriel, and his wife Elizabeth, have already left the village with their two sons three months ago, and now reside in the community of Katzir.

 

"We chose to come to Peki'in from Holland. We wanted to live in a place where people of all religions live side by side. At first we were very much respected, and paid our neighbors in kind," Gabriel recounted. "Until one day, my son came home crying and said that the children in his kindergarten no longer call him by his name, but al-Yahud (the Jew)."

 

Zegelman family's house after the riots (Photo: Gil Sapir)

 

Gabriel and Elizabeth have no plans of returning to their Peki'in house, which was purchased from a Christian family, at least not in the near future. "We have a lot of anger in our hearts. On the day of the riots I arrived at the village and couldn't bear to say hello to my friends there," said Gabriel.

 

Aviv Zegelman and his wife, Orit, left the village with their six children after their house was burned to the ground during last month's riots. They stated that they would return to Peki'in "only after tensions subside and the police confirm that it's safe. At the moment we have nothing to come back to, and it's very dangerous there."

 

Syrische atoombommenfabriek doelwit van Israëlisch bombardement september

Het wordt steeds waarschijnlijker dat Israëls geheimzinnige bombardement in Syrië op 6 september, een fabriek waar nucleaire bommen worden gemaakt tot doelwit had. Dit is gevaarlijker dan een nucleaire reactor, waarna het immers nog jaren kan duren voordat een land in staat is een atoombom te fabriceren.

But Even said that purely from scientific observation, he had reached a different conclusion - that it was a nuclear bomb factory, posing a more immediate danger to Israel. He said that satellite photos of the site, taken before the Israeli strike on September 6, showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of nuclear reactors.
Syria's haste after the attack to bury the site under tons of soil suggested that hundreds of square yards were contaminated and there were fears of radiation, the professor added.
Since then the Syrians have sealed up the location, levelled the site and diverted curious journalists to a place that had not been attacked by Israel.

Syrië had plutonium via Noord-Korea verkregen. Dit verklaart ook de stilte van alle betrokken landen, inclusief de VS. Dit land is immers in onderhandeling met Noord-Korea over sluiting van haar nucleaire installaties, en het heeft Syrië nodig voor vooruitgang in Irak. Israël en Syrië hadden beide geen belang bij een escalatie tot een oorlog, en Israëlische borstklopperij over de succesvolle aanval had de kans daarop zeker vergroot.

Het is ook duidelijk waarom Israël bereid was dit risico te wel lopen door te bombarderen, omdat de fabriek in de nabije toekomst een kernwapen zou kunnen produceren. Rest alleen nog de vraag waarom professor Uri Even nu wel bereid is te praten, en hoe betrouwbaar de Sunday Times is.


Ratna

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Israelis hit Syrian 'nuclear bomb plant'
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul
The Sunday Times (UK) December 2, 2007
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2983719.ece

ISRAEL'S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.

Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University was one of the founders of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, the source of the Jewish state's undeclared nuclear arsenal.

"I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely, a factory for assembling the bomb," he said. "I think the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] transferred to Syria weapons-grade plutonium in raw form, that is nuggets of easily transported metal in protective cans. I think the shaping and casting of the plutonium was supposed to be in Syria."

All governments concerned - even the regime in Damascus - have tried to maintain complete secrecy about the raid.

They apparently fear that forcing a confrontation on the issue could spark a war between Israel and Syria, end the Middle East peace talks and wreck America's extremely complex negotiations to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

The political stakes could hardly be higher. Plutonium is the element which fuelled the American atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Critics in the United States say proof that North Korea supplied such nuclear weapons material to Syria, a state technically at war with Israel, would shatter congressional confidence in the Bush administration's diplomatic policy.

From beneath the veil of military censorship, western commentators have formed a consensus that the target was a nuclear reactor under construction.

But Even said that purely from scientific observation, he had reached a different conclusion - that it was a nuclear bomb factory, posing a more immediate danger to Israel. He said that satellite photos of the site, taken before the Israeli strike on September 6, showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of nuclear reactors.

Syria's haste after the attack to bury the site under tons of soil suggested that hundreds of square yards were contaminated and there were fears of radiation, the professor added.

Since then the Syrians have sealed up the location, levelled the site and diverted curious journalists to a place that had not been attacked by Israel.

The professor's theory fits with authoritative technical evidence about North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. The North Koreans are able to produce weapons-grade plutonium, which is electro-refined, alloyed and cast into shapes ready to be machined to fit into a warhead, according to a team of distinguished American nuclear weapons scientists who visited the  country's laboratories.

One of those scientists, Siegfried Hecker, was allowed to hold a sample and was told that it was "good bomb grade plutonium", because it had a very low content of plutonium240, the isotope which reduces the overall quality of the material.

Assembly of a Nagasaki-type bomb involves mating a plutonium core with a uranium wrap and inserting a small quantity of polonium and beryllium to initiate the chain reaction.

"Plutonium is highly dangerous material," explained the Israeli professor. "It is easily oxidised in air unless protective measures are taken. The oxide is easily dispersed as dust in air when machining plutonium to create the 'pit' [a hollow sphere in many nuclear weapons] and thus can be inhaled, causing a fatality in minute quantities.

"Plutonium pellets are handled and machined exclusively in a large array of 'glove boxes', to protect the technicians and their environment. That is why you need a relatively large containment building and cannot assemble a nuclear weapon in your garage - unless you are suicidal of course."

The debris from a destructive raid on a weapons-building facility could therefore contain toxic radioactive waste. But the main danger for Syria would be the telltale exposure of the elements to surveillance and detection by America. This would explain the cover-up at the site.

North Korea, for its part, has more than enough plutonium to sell some of its stock to Syria.

The same team of visiting US scientists estimated that by late 2006 the nation had made 40-50kg (88-100lb) of the material. Between six and eight kilograms are needed for a weapon.

For the US and its allies the Syrian connection raises the deeply worrying possibility that North Korea has succeeded in building what the US scientists called "a sophisticated design with smaller dimensions and mass so as to fit onto a . . . medium-range missile".

That puzzle was complicated when North Korea announced that it had tested its first nuclear bomb on October 9 last year. The yield of the blast was small - less than a 20th of the Nagasaki bomb - suggesting to some scientists that the device was sophisticated and small while others believed the North Koreans had simply not made a very good bomb.

Professor Even believes the North Koreans have not yet perfected small warheads. "The mechanical dimensioning at this stage is extremely demanding (less than 0.01mm). So is the casting of the explosives around the plutonium core and the initiation of the implosion," he said.

The question is under urgent study by nations who might one day be targets of a North Korean device sold to Syria or Iran. Iran is known to have financed missile and weapons deals between North Korea and Syria, causing concern to Israel and the US. One day after the Israeli attack, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, sent his nephew with a personal letter to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader.

The professor's theory of a clear and present danger that Damascus would get the bomb may be the only credible explanation why Israel carried out a military strike against Syria and risked an all-out conflict.

Indeed on September 6 Israel was ready for war with Syria. Israeli sources said its military chiefs assumed Syria would launch a retaliatory attack, but no reprisal came.

Meanwhile, President Bush has authorised his chief negotiator, Christopher Hill, to go on talking to North Korea in the search for a peaceful solution. Hill will visit Pyongyang this week to pursue negotiations after international technicians got to work on disabling the reactor at Yongbyon, the source of North Korea's plutonium.

The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is supposed to make a full declaration of his nuclear programmes by December 31. The US says that must include information on his weapons deals with Syria and Iran.


--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Aanslagen tijdens vredesonderhandelingen legitiem verzet volgens PA

Vorige week vroeg Aaron Lerner van IMRA aan het Palestijnse departement dat over de gevangenen in Israël gaat, of men vond dat alle gevangenen vrij moesten worden gelaten voor de ondertekening van een vredesovereenkomst, ook Palestijnen die na de Annapolis conferentie, dus tijdens de vredesonderhandelingen, gearresteerd zullen worden. De directeur van het Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs antwoordt:

"You are talking about people detained for resistance operations that take place during the negotiations between Abu Mazen and Mr. Olmert - right?
It is the position of the Ministry that all prisoners should be released during this process. They are engaged in resistance against the Israeli occupation - not against the peace process.
We want all the prisoners to be released because the reason that they were retained was resistance to the occupation."

Wat hij in feite zegt, is dat het vermoorden van Israëli's of een poging daartoe (want dat is waar veel gevangenen voor zijn gearresteerd) legitiem verzet is tegen de bezetting. Dit is op zijn zachtst gezegd een beetje vreemd, want de regering onder leiding van Abbas heeft zich officiëel uitgesproken tegen geweld en aanslagen op Israëli's. Als er een vredesverdrag komt zal een amnestie regeling daar wellicht onderdeel van uitmaken, maar om op voorhand te zeggen dat iedereen die zich bezig houdt met 'verzet tegen de bezetting' vrijuit moet gaan is een ander verhaal. Het is immers de bedoeling dat de Palestijnse Autoriteit voor orde gaat zorgen en aanslagen op Israëli's gaat voorkomen. Als men deze aanvallen en aanslagen consequent met 'verzetsoperaties' aanduidt, en de plegers die daarbij omkomen als'martelaren' prijst zoals gebruikelijk bij de Palestijnen, bevordert en steunt men deze juist in plaats van ze tegen te gaan. Het feit dat politieagenten vorige week een Israëlische burger dood schoten is dan ook niet vreemd. Hoe één en ander zich tot de Routekaart en de mooie vredeswoorden op Annapolis verhoudt, is een geheel andere vraag.

 

Ratna

---------

PA Official to IMRA:

Killing Israelis is resistance to occupation - not peace process,

Palestinians who kill Israelis should not be imprisoned

Dr. Aaron Lerner / Date: 27 November 2007

Question to Mr. Saleh Nazal, Director, Minister's Office - Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs in English:  I wanted to understand the Palestinians position demanding the release of all Palestinian prisoners by the time of the signing of an agreement.  Would this also apply to Palestinians arrested for activities they carried out after Annapolis - during the negotiation period until the signing.

Would those people also, by the Palestinian view, have to be released by the time of the signing or would they have a different status?

Nazal: You are talking about people detained for resistance operations that take place during the negotiations between Abu Mazen and Mr. Olmert - right?

IMRA:  Yes.

Nazal:  It is the position of the Ministry that all prisoners should be released during this process.  They are engaged in resistance against the Israeli occupation - not against the peace process.

We want all the prisoners to be released because the reason that they were retained was resistance to the occupation.

IMRA: So that is to say that people detained for activities they carry out between Annapolis and the signing of an agreement should also qualify for release at the time of an agreement.

Nazal:  As I told you before.  This is resistance against the occupation. Not resistance against the negotiations.

The Israeli forces are arresting people, building settlements, building barriers.  You are looking only now at one party and not looking at the other one.


Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Golfstaten steeds bezorgder om atoomplannen Iran

Niet alleen Israël en de VS, maar ook de Golfstaten maken zich grote zorgen over de nucleaire ambities van Iran, en geloven niet in het sprookje dat haar nucleaire programma slechts voor vreedzame doeleinden is bedoeld.

 

_______________________

Gulf states increasingly wary of Iran's nuclear plans
Agence France-Presse - 02 December, 2007
www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=362565&news_type=Top&lang=en

The six Gulf states whose leaders meet in Doha tomorrow for a two-day summit are increasingly suspicious about Iran's nuclear ambitions which they fear could spark a new regional conflict. Tehran's nuclear programme is expected to be high on the agenda of the Doha summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The GCC states "support the peaceful efforts deployed to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, because any escalation would only complicate the situation," GCC Secretary-General Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah said.

"I solemnly invite all parties, including Iran, to use the language of reason and dialogue, away from confrontation and escalation," he said of the standoff with the international community over Tehran's programme of uranium enrichment.

Gulf leaders tend to avoid voicing their concerns about Iranian intentions in public.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend the GCC summit, the first time Iran will take part in a meeting of the group.

In an interview last month with British newspapers, Bahrain's Crown Prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, for the first time, accused the Islamic republic of seeking to acquire nuclear arms.

Fearing a new armed conflict after the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the first Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the GCC has proposed an internationally controlled consortium to supply enriched uranium to Middle Eastern countries.

This suggestion, greeted coldly by Tehran, is "the best guarantee to prevent having atomic arms in the region," said Riad Kahwaji, director of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

"When a country like Iran has the liberty to enrich uranium, there is a danger that this country will equip itself with atomic weapons," he said.

He said that Arab countries, which have announced their intention to start civilian nuclear programmes, cannot counterbalance Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"Iran has a real nuclear programme which is running and developing, while Arab states simply intend to acquire reactors to produce nuclear energy" without mastering the expertise needed to develop an atomic bomb, he added.

The GCC nuclear programme is the subject of a feasibility study which will be discussed at Doha. "The Gulf monarchies, which have increased the number of their joint military meetings, are seriously worried about the Iranian crisis sliding into an armed conflict," Kahwaji said. "These monarchies will be obliged to intervene in such conflict" if their territory close to Iran was hit, he added.


--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Civiele dienst bevordert de integratie van Israëlische Arabieren

Antizionisten spreken geregeld schande van de ongelijkheid tussen Joden en Arabieren in Israël en de discriminatie van de tweede groep. Je zult nooit iets positiefs van ze horen, zoals instemming met de verbreding van de vrijwillige maatschappelijke dienstplicht, die een zeer gunstig emancipatorisch effect kan hebben. Of een woord van afkeuring voor de negatieve - zelfs ronduit vijandige - reaktie van Israëlisch-Arabische leiders. Dat past niet in hun simpele visie van boze Zionisten versus zielige onderdrukte Arabieren.

 

Overigens geeft het leger niet alleen voordelen: er wordt ook over geklaagd dat juist mensen die niet in het leger hoeven te dienen betere carriere kansen hebben, omdat zij drie jaar eerder kunnen gaan studeren en werken. Een vervangende dienstplicht, zodat iedereen gedurende twee of drie jaar het land moet dienen, werkt in alle opzichten bevorderend voor de integratie en vermindert de ongelijkheid.

Dat Arabische politieke leiders hiertegen protesteren is kenmerkend voor hun weigering om deel uit te maken van de staat Israël. Minderheden hebben altijd moeten vechten voor gelijke rechten, maar die kunnen ze alleen krijgen als ze de staat ook erkennen en zich loyale burgers betonen.

 

 

Ratna & Wouter

------------------------

Resisting Arab integration
Political leaders who object to civilian service for Arabs undermine equality

Eliyahu Matza

Published: 12.02.07, 11:25 / Israel Opinion
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3477953,00.html

Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka characterized young Arab men and women who volunteer to perform civilian service (instead of military service) as "pariahs" and threatened to cut them off. No Arab Knesset member or public figure saw fit to express their disagreement, and some even supported this message.

Such response is irritating and puzzling. Irritating - in light of the baseless claim that the real intention behind the civilian service program is to obligate the Arabs to perform military service. Puzzling - because of the plan's rejection based on its aim to "Israelize" young Arabs.

Civilian service volunteer opportunities, which in the past have been open only to Jewish girls exempted from IDF service, have been opened to all those exempt from military service, including Arab citizens of Israel. Volunteering for civilian service grants the volunteer, following two years of service, the full benefits given to discharged soldiers.

Therefore, opening civilian service to young Arabs would make their chances equal to discharged soldiers in terms of academic studies and employment. Referring to people who do volunteer service as "pariahs" and presenting their Israeliness in a negative light aims to deter young Arabs from making a move that can first and foremost work in their favor.

It is worthwhile mentioning that the call to allow Arabs to volunteer for civilian service, which has been raised several times in the past, was explained by the State's duty to make it easy for young Arabs to integrate equally into Israeli society. A recommendation to comply with this call was included in a report submitted to the government in 2004 by a ministerial committee headed by then-Justice Minister Yosef Lapid.

Another committee recently looked into the matter as well. In its report, it proposed that civilian service, which at first will be on a voluntary basis, will turn into mandatory service after some time and constitute an equal alternative to IDF service.

Encouraging segregation

Recently it was reported that ever since the volunteer program has been expanded, the number of Arab volunteers for civilian service is constantly rising. Young Arabs who experienced the service have been praising the opportunity given to them. However, at this point it is hard to know how this trend will be affected by the position articulated by Arab leaders, who reject such service.

We should not accept calls that Arab civilian rights should be conditioned on their willingness to bear all the obligations assumed by Jewish citizens. In addition, we should not condition the acceptance of an Arab to school or work at a public body on performing civilian service. Equality requires us to treat a young Arab who did not volunteer just as we treat a young Jew who did not volunteer.

However, equality is not undermined if the right for special benefits, granted only to soldiers who completed their IDF service, will be granted to all those exempt from service only if they volunteered for civilian service.

Those who care about promoting the equally of Arab Israelis should be concerned about the line led by Arab leaders. Integrating the Arabs into equal frameworks is conditioned, among other things, on the Arab willingness to integrate, yet Arab leaders are not encouraging integration – rather, they are encouraging segregation.

The burden of advancing the equality of Israeli Arabs is first and foremost the Israeli government's job. Yet it would be very beneficial if Arab institutes and public figures, who attach importance to the integration of young Arabs into their country, would publicly express their disagreement over the positions articulated by their political leaders.

Palestijnse agenten achter aanslag op Joodse kolonist

De Palestijnse politie en veiligheidsdiensten worden - net als tijdens het Oslo vredesproces - onder andere getraind en bewapend door de VS, om zo beter in staat te zijn tegen de gewapende milities en Hamas op te treden. Ook heeft men wapens van Rusland gekregen. Israël moet hier uiteraard toestemming voor geven, en heeft dat gedaan, ondanks het feit dat dergelijke wapens tijdens de tweede intifada tegen Israël zijn gebruikt.

 

Vorige week - een dag voor de vredesconferentie in Annapolis - werd een Israëlische burger op de Westelijke Jordaanoever doodgeschoten, naar nu blijkt door leden van de Palestijnse politie. Dit is een zeer slecht signaal voor wat betreft het zojuist herstarte vredesproces. Dit zijn immers juist de mensen die aanslagen op en aanvallen tegen Israëlische burgers moeten voorkomen. Hoe kan Israël nu nog de Palestijnse politie vertrouwen, en gebied gaan overdragen aan de Palestijnse Autoriteit? Abbas en zijn regering zullen dit zeer serieus moeten nemen.

 

 

Ratna

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PA policemen behind last week's shooting attack in W. Bank

Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 2, 2007
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546785899&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Palestinian policemen were behind the shooting attack last week which killed Ido Zoldan, a 29 year-old father of two from the settlement of Shavei Shomron, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed Sunday night.

Zoldan was killed last Monday night - the day before the Annapolis summit began - when shots were fired at his car as he drove past the Palestinian village of al-Punduk.

The three members of the cell were Palestinian policemen and members of the Palestinian National Security Force, which Israel and the United States have been investing in as part of the international effort to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government.

Defense officials said that the weapon used in the attack was not supplied to the Palestinians by Israel since it did not belong to the official Palestinian security forces. The officials said however that the IDF expected the political echelon to rethink its policy of strengthening Abbas while his policemen were involved in terrorism.

The day after the attack, acting on intelligence, IDF soldiers and Shin Bet operatives raided the village of Kfar Kadum, near al-Pundak and arrested Daper Barham and Abdullah Barahm, both 22-year-old Palestinian policemen and members of Fatah. The third suspect, Fadi Jama, also a policeman, was in Palestinian Police custody.

During their interrogation, the two confessed their involvement in the attack and handed over the weapon used in the shooting to the Shin Bet. They said that they had parked their car on the side of the road and waited for an Israeli car to pass by. Once Zoldan's car appeared, they merged onto the road, passed him up and opened fire. They told their inteoogratos that they decided to carry out the attack to "scare settlers."

PA vernedert Hamasleden met het afscheren van baarden

Als Israël dit zou doen zou het in alle Nederlandse kranten staan en zouden mensenrechtenorganisaties harde veroordelingen uitspreken. En wat te denken van het volgende:

"Abu Qainas was actually a member of the Palestinian security forces," he added. "On the way to the tower, he kept pleading with the policemen to let him go because he was not a member of Hamas. But they didn't believe him. They asked him, 'If you are really not from Hamas, how come you have a beard?' He replied that he was too poor to buy razors and that's why he hadn't shaved his face. But they did not believe him and pushed him to his death."

Haj said he was then taken to a security compound, where he was shot 12 times in the legs. "I tried to explain to them that I'm not from Hamas, but they didn't want to listen," he said. "My only crime, like that of Husam Abu Qainas, was that I had a beard. For them this was enough to shoot me and kill him."

Onnodig te vermelden dat Hamas evenmin vies is van dergelijke praktijken, maar een ieder die het lot van de Palestijnen na aan het hart ligt zou zich tegen dergelijke zaken moeten uitspreken.

 

Ratna

-----------

Jerusalem Post / Dec 2, 2007 0:20 | Updated Dec 2, 2007 10:40

PA renews policy of shaving Hamas men's beards
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1195546778174&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Nearly a decade ago, former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was so upset with Hamas that he ordered his security forces to arrest leaders of the Islamist movement and shave their beards.

The move was intended to humiliate the Hamas leaders, who were embarrassed to appear in public beardless after they were freed. Many Hamas members then shaved their beards voluntarily to avoid being arrested by the PA security forces.

Now Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces are working hard to thwart any attempt by Hamas to seize the West Bank, has renewed the policy of shaving the beards of Hamas figures. A senior Hamas figure from the village of Skaka near Nablus is the latest victim of the beard-shaving policy.

Sheikh Husam Harb, 48, who has been wearing a beard ever since he was a teenager, was arrested by Abbas's security forces in mid-October on charges of membership in Hamas.

Last week villagers who went to congratulate him upon his release from prison were shocked to see him sitting at home without a beard.

The sheikh said the Palestinian security forces shaved his beard shortly before releasing him. "The security agents came to my cell in the evening and informed me of the decision to shave my beard, which I've had for 25 years," he recounted. "The whole act lasted only a few minutes. I was so shocked that I couldn't sleep all night."

Egypt's notorious and much-feared secret services were among the first in the Arab world to use beard-shaving as a means of humiliation against members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. The new-old measure, PA officials in Ramallah explained, is in the context of the continued clampdown on Hamas members and institutions in the West Bank.

"This is an effective method in the war against Hamas," said one official. "Shaving their beards really embarrasses the Hamas men. We've tried it before and it works."

The official noted that Palestinian security agents had shaved the beard of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar back in the mid-1990s while he was in detention in Gaza City. He added that the decision was taken by senior officials in Arafat's inner circle.

Many Muslims believe that, according to Islamic teachings, it is mandatory to grow a beard. Some even go as far as arguing that growing a beard is one of the sunnahs [trodden path] of the Prophet Muhammad. In Islam, the sunnah is the secondary source of Islamic law after the Quran.

The Prophet Muhammad is believed to have made a number of references regarding the significance of beards in Islam.

His followers quoted him as saying, "Be distinguished from disbelievers, grow your beards, and shave your mustaches." He was also quoted as saying, "Trim the moustache and save the beard." According to prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al- Qardawi, the Prophet related the reason for growing a beard to the necessity of distinguishing Muslims from non-Muslims.

The non-Muslims referred to are the Persians who used to shave their beards. The Prophet wanted to teach Muslims how to be distinguished in their appearance and their behavior.

Besides, explains al-Qardawi, "Shaving a beard is an act of revolting against the nature of man, and imitating women. Thus, the beard is a sign of maturity and manhood and many Muslim scholars have made it haram [prohibited] to shave a beard."
 
Hamas activists claimed over the weekend that the case of Sheikh Harb was not an isolated incident. They told The Jerusalem Post that at least 20 other Hamas members have had their beards shaven while they were being held in detention by PA security forces in the West Bank.

According to the activists, the forced shaving of beards had been a common practice in the Gaza Strip before Hamas took full control over the area last June. They pointed out that some young men who were not affiliated with Hamas were beaten or killed by PA security agents and officers simply because they were wearing beards.

Anas al-Haj, a 20 year-old bearded man from the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, said he was kidnapped by PA policemen who stopped a taxi he was riding "because I was the only one with a beard." He said the policemen took him to a security installation, where they beat him severely and extinguished cigarettes on his beard and other parts of the body.

Haj said that while in detention he met another young man, Husam Abu Qainas, who was also wearing a beard. He said the PA policemen took them to a tower in Gaza City, where they pushed Abu Qainas to his death from the 14th floor.

"Abu Qainas was actually a member of the Palestinian security forces," he added. "On the way to the tower, he kept pleading with the policemen to let him go because he was not a member of Hamas. But they didn't believe him. They asked him, 'If you are really not from Hamas, how come you have a beard?' He replied that he was too poor to buy razors and that's why he hadn't shaved his face. But they did not believe him and pushed him to his death."

Haj said he was then taken to a security compound, where he was shot 12 times in the legs. "I tried to explain to them that I'm not from Hamas, but they didn't want to listen," he said. "My only crime, like that of Husam Abu Qainas, was that I had a beard. For them this was enough to shoot me and kill him."

Demonstranten in Kartoem eisen dood van Britse teddybeer lerares

De ophef over de Soedanese teddybeer die Mohammed werd genoemd, haalde afgelopen week ook uitvoerig de Nederlandse media.

 

Soedan is een islamitische staat waar de Sharia rechtspraak geldt. Of de ondergenoemde demonstranten Sharia-geleerden zijn is zeer de vraag, maar het zal ongetwijfeld door diplomatieke druk komen dat de straf voor de lerares nog vrij licht uitpakte: na 15 dagen cel zal ze het land worden uitgezet.

 

Terwijl de middeleeuwers om het hoofd van de Britse lerares schreeuwden, werden in Darfur weer onschuldige mensen vermoord door de Janjaweed.

 

Hoelang zal het nog duren voordat in zo'n land Westerse - pardon, universele - waarden als vrijheid en democratie zullen aarden, en is het wel verstandig om een zo'n cultuur democratie na te streven?

 

Onze grote schrijver Multatuli zag niets in democratie, maar gaf de voorkeur aan een verlicht koningschap. Dat zou hier waarschijnlijk het hoogst haalbare zijn.

 

Wouter

 

Zie ook het commentaar: Teddy the Terrible

___________________

Khartoum protesters demand death for 'teddy' teacher
Posted: 01 December 2007 0205 hrs

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/314852/1/.html


KHARTOUM : Thousands of angry Sudanese, some brandishing swords, marched Friday through the centre of Khartoum calling for the execution of a British woman teacher as she began a brief jail term for insulting Islam.

"Those who insult the Prophet of Islam should be punished with bullets," a sea of white-clad demonstrators shouted after Gillian Gibbons, 54, was jailed for 15 days on charges stemming from naming a teddy bear Mohammed.

Others chanted "Execute her!" as Sudanese security forces deployed around the British embassy and the ambassador's residence and the demonstration, called by religious leaders during Friday prayers, spread.

The protesters flocked into the centre of the Sudanese capital from several mosques the day after a criminal court passed sentence on Gibbons.

She could have faced a maximum sentence of 40 lashes, six months' jail and a fine.

Gibbons was jailed on Thursday for allowing pupils in her class to call a teddy bear Mohammed as part of a school project.

Sheikh Hussein Mubarak told thousands of faithful gathered for the Muslim day of prayer that the court's "verdict was lenient out of fear of criticism from human rights organisations, America and the West."

The British embassy warned its citizens in Sudan about the demonstration, telling them to lie low and be vigilant.

Some of the crowd turned on an AFP correspondent and shouted at him to "Go home." He was later briefly detained by security services.

The organisers rallied the crowd using loud hailers from an improvised podium on a lorry in front of the palace of President Omar al-Beshir before they marched down one of Khartoum's main streets.

The angry crowd of men, some carrying banners declaring "Punishment, punishment, punishment" and "The entire nation is at your service, O Prophet of Allah", marched past the school were Gibbons taught a class of six- to seven-year-olds for a term until her arrest last Sunday.

The bulk of the crowd dispersed peacefully, but hundreds later congregated outside the heavily guarded British embassy, some of them on horseback.

Sudanese police prevented the crowd approaching the embassy but a Sufi religious leader was allowed to hand over a message explaining their unhappiness.

An embassy spokesman said later that the crowd had dispersed and "it looks like it's getting back to normal." He said he did not know whether Gibbons, a mother of two, was aware that the crowds were calling for her death.

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP they were aware of the demonstration but that "the local authorities are keeping it under control."

"We are pursuing diplomatic contacts with the Sudanese government," he said. "What we're searching for is a swift resolution of this issue... it's very difficult to say what will be the outcome."

He declined to say whether they were seeking Gibbons' early release.

Earlier, Sheikh Mubarak railed at what he said was an attempt "to transform Sudan from an Islamic state into a Christian state," adding that the British teacher had come to Sudan "as part of that design."

"Why did this teacher come to Sudan? She surely didn't need to emigrate from her country for the money? So she came for another reason..." he told the faithful at Al-Safa mosque in the city's eastern Jarif district.

He denounced "those who try to defend democracy and human rights and insult the Prophet," adding that he did not think the teacher would even serve out the 15-day sentence.

At the central Martyr's Mosque, another imam, Sheikh Abdul Jalil Karuri, said Gibbons "did it with the intention of insulting Islam."

The crowd responded with cries of "The army of Islam will prevail."

The trial itself took place behind a significant police barrier to avoid such demonstrations which, as with last year's publication of caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, have previously led to violence.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the trial stemmed from an "innocent misunderstanding" as diplomatic contacts continued "in the search for a swift resolution of this issue," the Foreign Office said.

British embassy officials visited Gibbons in prison at an undisclosed location earlier Friday after she began serving her sentence. The 15-day sentence was to run from Sunday when she was arrested.

"The consul and the deputy ambassador visited her this morning and she was fine," an embassy spokesman told AFP. "She's in good spirits and she's not being mistreated or anything like that."

Friday's demonstration was called by the Committee of Ulemas and the Partisans of the Prophet as well as other religious associations. Some imams called for the faithful to congregate outside the presidential palace in the centre of Khartoum after the prayers.

- AFP

Nadia Abu El-Haj: feiten in de lucht

De Palestijns-Amerikaanse antropologe Nadia Abu El-Haj betwist de archeologische bewijzen van het bestaan van een oud Israëlitisch koninkrijk. Archeologen zouden, net als de kolonisten, slechts feiten op de grond creëren om Joods-nationale claims op te baseren.

"The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location for the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood, producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects, and historicities 'happen.'" Thus, the field of archaeology simply becomes one more theater for the project of "Jewish settler- colonial nation state-building."

Zij stelt expliciet dat feiten er voor haar niet toe doen, en het slechts om de achterliggende ideologie gaat. In jargon:

She explains her work as "rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method." Instead, she works on the level of theory, within the frameworks of "post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory." These frameworks are united by a "commitment to understanding archaeology as necessarily political."

Op deze manier is alles politiek, en is niks meer waar dan iets anders. Dit heet in jargon post-modernisme, en is op sommige Amerikaanse universtiteiten erg populair.
Nadia El-Haj's ideeën passen niet alleen in een postmoderne, post-structuralistische traditie, maar ook in de Palestijnse traditie om de historische band van de Joden met Israël en Jeruzalem te ontkennen. Palestijnse leiders doen veelvuldig dergelijke uitspraken, en er stond jarenlang een dergelijk artikel op de officiële website van de Palestijnse Autoriteit. De islamitische waqf, die het beheer over de Tempelberg in handen heeft, heeft doelbewust artefacten vernietigd die de Joodse band bevestigen.

Om de één of andere reden is hiervoor geen aandacht in het Westen en maakt Israël er zelf ook geen groot punt van. De idee is inmiddels gemeengoed geworden dat de Palestijnen net zo verbonden zijn met Jeruzalem, en de fabel dat Mohammed zijn half-paard aan de Klaagmuur had vastgebonden voor hij erop ten hemel steeg, wordt als net zo legitiem beschouwd als de Joodse Tempels en het feit dat het eeuwenlang de hoofdstad van de Israëlieten is geweest. 


Ratna

Zie ook: Nadia Abu El Haj versus written history and the scientific method - II
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Last update - 09:04 02/12/2007

Facts in the air
By Bari Weiss 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/929660.html


Earlier this month, a young anthropology professor named Nadia Abu El-Haj received tenure at Barnard College, a division of Columbia University in New York. Unlike most academic promotions, which largely go unnoticed, her successful tenure bid was met with raucous jeers and cheers. Here was a victory for a "purveyor of hate," according to Paula Stern, the Barnard alumna who organized a campaign to deny El-Haj tenure. For her supporters, this marked a clear victory against the "New McCarthyism" - the alleged campaign now being waged against scholars who criticize Israel, particularly those of Arab descent.

It's all too easy to toss the news of El-Haj's tenure into the stew that is the ongoing battle over the state of Middle Eastern studies at universities today. But this is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. This is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.

Sound hyperbolic? Consider El-Haj's 2001 work, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society" (University of Chicago Press), based on her doctoral thesis at Duke, and the only book upon which she was granted tenure. Its title is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to Moshe Dayan's post-1967 suggestion that Israel take de facto control of areas in the West Bank by purposefully building settlements there.

In it, El-Haj argues that for decades Israeli archaeologists have literally created facts on the ground. To argue that people, rather than evidence, create archaeological fact, El-Haj is forced to abandon the methodology of science altogether. And this is precisely what she does. She explains her work as "rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method." Instead, she works on the level of theory, within the frameworks of "post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory." These frameworks are united by a "commitment to understanding archaeology as necessarily political."

El-Haj is hardly the first to employ this approach. Perhaps its most powerful trailblazer was Edward Said, who argued in his landmark 1978 book "Orientalism," that when dealing with Asia, the West was necessarily politicized. Said alleged that even the most well-intentioned scholars, if they were Western, were Orientalists, actively constructing a mythical "Orient" out of their own political motivations as the exotic, feminized, other. For Said, there is no such thing as objectivity in scholarship, and those who claim to strive for it may well be the ones with the most to hide.

Said's approach quickly spiraled into nasty finger-pointing, in which he and his disciples accused seasoned scholars in the field of implicit political bias at best, and at worst, of harboring a kind of pervasive racism. With tremendous success, his book asserted that there is no such thing as truth or fact. Instead, there is only identity.

Now, consider imposing this rough framework on the field of archaeology in the land of Israel. Here we are not talking of novels or paintings with Middle Eastern themes. More than perhaps any other, this is a field based on physical objects dug out of the ground: potsherds, bits of wood, and, if you're lucky, foundations and walls of ancient buildings. And yet, to El-Haj, such hard physical evidence is in fact just as easily constructed as the theoretical Western conception of the East. She writes of Israeli archaeology: "At the most fundamental level, archaeology produced... and created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation and nation-state rooted therein." Rather than taking existing evidence to create historical theories, El-Haj holds that the field of archaeology creates evidence itself. In her narrative, highly regarded Israeli archaeologists turn into nationalist robots, wielding bulldozers in a desperate effort to "create" evidence of a historic Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, where no such presence existed.

El-Haj spells out the contemporary implications of creating such facts on the ground. "The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location for the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood, producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects, and historicities 'happen.'" Thus, the field of archaeology simply becomes one more theater for the project of "Jewish settler- colonial nation state-building."

By casting the whole of Israeli archaeology in this way, El-Haj grants herself permission to interpret Palestinian destruction of ancient artifacts as a legitimate form of "resistance." By "destroying the tomb [Joseph's Tomb in 2001], Palestinian demonstrators eradicated one 'fact on the ground.'" This is El-Haj's logic come full circle. Ancient artifacts are just as synthetic as pre-fab houses in the West Bank, thereby rendering the destruction of both equally justified, even heroic.

Let's be clear: Is it in the interest of today's Zionists to find evidence of an ancient Israelite kingdom in the Land of Israel? Of course. But recognizing such interest does not preclude the possibility of the application of fair, professional standards, and the ability of archaeologists, regardless of their ethnic group, to uphold them in good faith.

El-Haj's work does not remind readers of the need to be skeptical of the influence nationalism can have on the interpretation of archaeological facts. Instead, she has written a book condemning the notion of facts themselves. It is for this reason that those who care about the future of the veracity of facts - and not just the future of Israel - should take serious notice of her promotion.


Bari Weiss is a Dorot fellow living in Jerusalem.

Nixon was bezorgd over Israëlische kernwapens

"The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons," Henry Kissinger, former US president Richard Nixon's national security adviser, warned in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969, part of a newly released trove of documents.

 

De VS heeft nooit zo kritiekloos achter Israël gestaan als vaak wordt beweerd.

Terwijl Kissinger erkende dat Israël meer bedreigd werd dan enig ander land, wilde hij haar dwingen haar kernwapen programma te ontmantelen.

De vrijgegeven documenten laten nog iets anders zien: het is moeilijk een land ervan te weerhouden kernwapens te ontwikkelen als het dat wil en aan de vereiste ingrediënten en kennis weet te komen.

Ratna
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'Nixon was concerned over Israeli nukes'

ABAYE SILBER , THE JERUSALEM POST

Nov. 29, 2007


In 1969, the Nixon administration was concerned about Israel's alleged possession of nuclear weapons and the possibility of an arms race in the Middle East, The New York Times reported Thursday.

"The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons," Henry Kissinger, former US president Richard Nixon's national security adviser, warned in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969, part of a newly released trove of documents.

The Nixon administration's concerns were detailed in documents from the Nixon Presidential Library, the Times said. By law all classified documents must be reviewed and possibly declassified after 25 years.

The documents provide insights into America's relationship with Israel and reveal tensions in the relationship regarding Israel's nuclear weapons, a source of disagreement in the US-Israel alliance.

Kissinger wrote about the difficulty of convincing Israel to abandon its nuclear program, and his concern that Israel may have stolen nuclear-related material from the US.

"This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us," Kissinger said, "and may even have stolen from us."

Kissinger presented the option of pretending that the US was not aware of Israel's nuclear weapons and maintaining deliberate ambiguity. Another option he laid forward was to withhold Phantom fighter jets from Israel as an incentive to cooperate on the nuclear issue, according to the Times.

"Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need," he wrote.

"On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us," Kissinger went on. "We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel's possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails."

Some of the consequences that Kissinger feared might have been to "spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement," Kissinger wrote at another point.

The documents also contain snippets about Washington's attempt to manipulate relations with Saudi Arabia to broker a Middle East peace deal, and discussion of supporting a Kurdish uprising in Iraq, the Times reported.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546765201&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Column Caroline Glick: Apartheid in plaats van vrede?

Ik ben bepaald geen fan van Caroline Glick, maar in haar column vrijdag in de Jeruzalem Post doet ze een rake observatie. Terwijl iedereen vol lof is over het feit dat de Arabische Liga de vredesconferentie in Annapolis steunde, en haar leider Saoedi-Arabië bereid was met Israëlische vertegenwoordigers in één ruimte te zitten, is een klein detail de meesten blijkbaar ontgaan:

This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil.

Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.

At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory treatment. "Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn't anyone want to be seen speaking to me?" she asked pointedly. *)

Israel's humiliated foreign minister did not receive support from her American counterpart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spent her childhood years in the segregated American South, sided with the Arabs.
Although polite enough to note that she doesn't support the slaughter of Israelis, she made no bones about the fact that her true sympathies lie with the racist Arabs.

As she put it, "I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."

Rice's remarks make clear that for the Secretary of State there is no difference between Israelis trying to defend themselves from a jihadist Palestinian society which supports the destruction of the Jewish state and bigoted white Southerners who oppressed African Americans because of the color of their skin. It is true that Israel has security concerns, but as far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who was forced - by Rice - to enter the conference through the service entrance.

Glick vermeldt niet dat Rice had gezegd dat haar jeugd haar begrip had bijgebracht voor beide kanten, en dat ze ook begreep wat het is om dagelijks bang te moeten zijn voor aanslagen. Glick heeft gelijk dat de redenen van de reisrestricties voor de Palestijnen van een fundamenteel andere aard zijn dan de restricties tegen de zwarten in de VS, en in dat opzicht vind ik Rice's opmerkingen niet erg gelukkig. Maar het is natuurlijk wel een feit dat de checkpoints een zware tol heffen op het dagelijks leven van veel onschuldige Palestijnen.

Volgens Glick is iedereen die kritiek uit op de nederzettingen (sorry: gemeenschappen in Judea en Samaria), op Israëlisch geweld en op discriminatie tegen Palestijnen een racist, maar ik vind het verbluffend dat ik niemand heb gehoord over het feit dat Livni door een aparte deur naar binnen moest. Zou ze ook van andere toiletten gebruik hebben moeten maken? De eetzaal door een aparte deur zijn binnengetreden? Waarom is dit geen schandaal geworden? Of heeft dit zich alleen in de fantasiewereld van Glick voorgedaan?

 

Ratna

 

 

*) Het ministerie ontkende overigens dat Livni dit zo gezegd zou hebben.

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Hamas: Alle opties open tegen de Zionistische misdadigers

"All options are open to answer any crime, expecially after the Annapolis conference, which gave the Zionists a green light to commit more and more crimes against our people," said a statement from the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

 

Alle opties staan altijd open om welke 'misdaad' van Israël dan ook te vergelden, dus dat is geen nieuws.

 

Terwijl er al gesproken wordt van een toenadering tussen Hamas en Fatah, laat Hamas alvast weten op welke voorwaarden dat zou moeten gebeuren: 

 

Hamas also warned the Palestinian leadership to implement the roadmap plan, which was purely security plan to end the Palestinian resistance and to strengthen the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The first phase of the roadmap called  for the Palestinians to undertake "visible" steps against resistance responses to the occupation crimes in the area.

 

"It is not acceptable to implement the steps in the first phase of the roadmap, especially if they arrest our mujahedeen or take our weapons," the statement said.

"If this happens, it will mean a declaration of war between us and any side which implements the roadmap steps."

 

 

Het moge dus andermaal duidelijk zijn dat de afspraken die in Annapolis zijn gemaakt toenadering tussen Fatah en Hamas uitsluit, en Fatah doet er dan ook goed aan zich niet met dergelijke pogingen in te laten, en de gematigde Arabische staten te vragen dit evenmin te doen.

 

 

Ratna

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All options opened after killing 12 Qassam men
2007-12-01 Website of Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades - the armed branch of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
www.alqassam. ps/english/?action=showdetail&fid=739

During the Weekend of the last week, the occupation forces shelled some official sites for the Palestinian police and some other places in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 13 Palestinians and injuring tens others, claiming that these attacks are against the Qassam rockets which were fired at the Zionist settlements and outposts around the Gaza Strip.

Hamas warned on Thursday that all options were open for the mujahedeen against the Zionist forces and settlers after killing 12 Qassam men with some other civilians.

"All options are open to answer any crime, expecially after the Annapolis conference, which gave the Zionists a green light to commit more and more crimes against our people," said a statement from the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

Hamas also warned the Palestinian leadership to implement the roadmap plan, which was purely security plan to end the Palestinian resistance and to strengthen the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The first phase of the roadmap called  for the Palestinians to undertake "visible" steps against resistance responses to the occupation crimes in the area.

"It is not acceptable to implement the steps in the first phase of the roadmap, especially if they arrest our mujahedeen or take our weapons," the statement said.

"If this happens, it will mean a declaration of war between us and any side which implements the roadmap steps."


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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Verzoening tussen Fatah en Hamas sluit vredesproces uit

Vlak na de conferentie in Annapolis, doen opnieuw geruchten over toenaderingspogingen tussen Hamas en Fatah de ronde:

 

According to the reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle.
A senior Palestinian official who visited Cairo this week said the Egyptians and Saudis have reached the conclusion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't be able to move forward with the peace talks with Israel without solving his problems with Hamas.

 

The official said Abbas had given his blessing to Cairo and Riyadh to resume their efforts to end the crisis with Hamas.

 

 

In Annapolis heeft Abbas beloofd de eerste fase van de Routekaart naar Vrede uit te voeren. Hamas is daar fel tegen gekant, en heeft met oorlog gedreigd als Abbas deze belofte gaat uitvoeren. Hoe kunnen Egypte en Saoedi-Arabië tot de conclusie zijn gekomen dat Abbas niet verder komt met de vredesbesprekingen zonder de problemen met Hamas op te lossen? Het 'oplossen van de problemen met Hamas' gaat niet samen met serieuze vredesbesprekingen met Israël. Men kan zich afvragen hoe gematigd landen zijn die Abbas' autoriteit continu ondermijnen door op een compromis met het moslimextremistische Hamas aan te dringen.

 

 

Ratna

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Exclusive: 'Fatah, Hamas may join ranks'
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 29, 2007
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546765575&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday.

"Fatah won't remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip," the official said. "We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It's our duty to defend our people against the occupiers."

The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. "The homeland is more important than all our differences," he said.

The statements came amid reports that some Arab countries were planning to resume mediation efforts between Fatah and Hamas to avoid further deterioration in the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference.

According to the reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle.
A senior Palestinian official who visited Cairo this week said the Egyptians and Saudis have reached the conclusion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't be able to move forward with the peace talks with Israel without solving his problems with Hamas.

The official said Abbas had given his blessing to Cairo and Riyadh to resume their efforts to end the crisis with Hamas.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak phoned Abbas Thursday and discussed with him the results of the Annapolis conference and the possibility of resuming negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. Abbas is currently on a visit to Tunisia, where he is expected to brief veteran PLO officials on the outcome of the conference.

Earlier this week, the Egyptian government gave permission to several pro-Palestinian organizations in Egypt to send truckloads of food and medicine to the Gaza Strip. The trucks are scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip on Friday through the Rafah border crossing, which remains closed to travelers.

Hamas, meanwhile, is bracing for a massive IDF operation to halt the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said Hamas's security forces have been placed on full alert and most of the movement's senior leaders have gone into hiding for fear of being targeted by Israel. In addition, Hamas has evacuated many of its security and civil institutions.

Hamas leaders on Thursday tried to establish a link between the Annapolis conference and a potential IDF attack on the Gaza Strip. They said the latest escalation, which claimed the lives of some 20 Hamas members over the past week, was directly linked to the conference.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said Israel was stepping up its military operations in the Gaza Strip to cover up for the "failure" of the Annapolis conference. He said the thousands of Palestinians who demonstrated against the conference over the past few days in the West Bank indicated that a majority of the public were opposed to Annapolis.

Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri said the killing of six Hamas activists over the past 48 hours was one of the direct results of the Annapolis conference.
"The Annapolis conference has failed," he said. "This conference was nothing but an attempt to impose the American and Israeli agenda on the Palestinians. The conference also gave a green light to Israel to launch a big military operation in the Gaza Strip."