Olmert Rejects Truce Offers
He wants An Excuse to Follow Long-Held Plans | 24.12.2007 19:36 | Anti-racism | World
In Germany, according to historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough Germans of conscience had begun to say No -- history would have had an entirely diferent outcome.
If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives. They will be (Israeli) tears.
The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.
Adapted from "American Tears"
www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html
If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives. They will be (Israeli) tears.
The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.
Adapted from "American Tears"
www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html
Olmert rejects truce with Hamas
Dec 23, 2007 07:02 PM
Mark Lavie
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM – Israel's prime minister Sunday pledged a war against Gaza militants, rejecting feelers from Hamas for a truce, while an Israeli cabinet minister angered moderate Palestinians with another plan for new Jewish housing in a disputed part of Jerusalem, complicating renewed peace talks.
(Note that it is the Zionist Extremists who are rejecting peace. They will continue to do so as long as nobody actually demands they end their war to wipe Palestine off the map.)
"There is no other way to describe what is happening in the Gaza Strip except as a true war between the Israeli army and terrorist elements," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet, ruling out truce talks.
(Actually, human rights organizations have called it an international crime. Israel plotted this aggression long before Annapolis, and is using the violence it created in order to 'justify' it. Not suprisingly, most Governments and the bulk of the media is letting them get away with it.)
Reports of truce feelers from the embattled Hamas government in Gaza have been surfacing almost daily, and Israeli defence officials have said they are examining the proposals.
The unconfirmed reports have Hamas convincing fellow militants in Gaza to stop their daily rocket fire at southern Israel, while Israel halts its air and ground operations in Gaza.
Speaking to his cabinet at Sunday's weekly meeting, Olmert rejected negotiations with Hamas because it has rejected international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and endorse past peace accords.
(But mainly, this attack on Gaza has been planned for over a year, and he won't let a little thing like peace get in the way of undermining the elected Palestinian Government, and further dividing the Palestinians.)
"We have declared (this war) and we will continue," Olmert said at the beginning of the meeting, which reporters are allowed to attend. "This is true regarding Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all other elements."
Despite their overt rejections of a formal ceasefire, Israeli officials have been saying a formal truce is unnecessary. They say if Gaza militants stop the rocket fire, Israel would have no reason to attack.
(It would have no excuse. It has always intended to attack. That's why it imposed measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza, despite warnings from its own defence staff that this would provoke violence. Israel routinely attacks the W. Bank, even though nobody lobs rockets from there, disproving this statement.)
Israeli air strikes over a two-day period last week killed 12, including two top Islamic Jihad commanders.
(And how many civilians? How many during the entire period of Israeli aggression?)
The truce feelers started surfacing a day later, first in a call from Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh to an Israeli TV reporter and later, according to officials, by way of Egypt, which has mediated several other past truces.
Islamic Jihad, which is (allegedly behind most of the rocket salvos, Sunday again rejected a truce with Israel. By nightfall three rockets fired from Gaza exploded in Israel, causing no damage or casualties, the military said.
("causing no damage or casualties", "causing no damage or casualties", "causing no damage or casualties")
Israeli officials said Defence Minister Ehud Barak will travel this week to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. It was unclear whether a ceasefire would be on the agenda.
Also Sunday, Israel allocated $207 million over five years to develop a system, with the U.S., to knock down missiles like the ones fired from Gaza or during last year's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
(Which was really an attack on the civilians and infrastructure of Lebanon ...)
After Hamas overran Gaza in June, expelling forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel and Egypt closed their borders with Gaza, further worsening the critical economic situation there.
(Actually, they expelled forces loyal to the US and Israel, after a failed coup attempt. This information is not hard to find, suggesting that the media is intentionally misrepresenting this conflict.)
In parallel, the West began promoting the Abbas government in the West Bank, renewing aid cut off after Hamas won a 2006 election.
At last month's peace conference in Annapolis, Md., hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush, Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks for the first time in seven years.
(But it was mainly a way for Bush/Olmert to gain some positive PR, before Israel began attacking Gaza, continuing its illegal and immoral measures against Gaza, stepping up the construction of illegal settlements, and pursuing war with Iran.)
But disputes over Israeli construction in Jerusalem have harmed the atmosphere. Just before the talks restarted, Israel announced a plan to build 307 apartments in Har Homa in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed.
(A war which was provoked by Israel, in the name of annexing further land.)
The international community never recognized Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem, and Palestinians claim the area as the capital of the state they want to create.
(As guaranteed by UN Resolutions.)
On Sunday Rafi Eitan, cabinet minister for Jerusalem affairs, confirmed that the Construction Ministry's proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 new apartments for Har Homa, as well as 240 new apartments in Maaleh Adumim, a major West Bank settlement just outside Jerusalem.
(Including over $250 million in US taxpayer money.)
Eitan told Army radio that Israel never promised to halt construction within the municipal borders of Jerusalem. Eitan called both areas "integral" parts of Jerusalem.
(Such Sophistry! According to Solomon's wisdom, since the Palestinians were willing to give up a portion, but the Israelis weren't, the entire city should be given to the Palestinians ...)
Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said he was "not aware" of the plan to expand Har Homa and said there was "no new decision" for additional construction in Maaleh Adumim.
Abbas charged that the construction projects undermined new peace efforts.
"The negotiations are facing obstacles," Abbas told members of his Fatah party. "We can't understand these settlement activities at a time we're talking about final status negotiations."
The recently revived "road map" peace plan requires Israel to halt all settlement construction.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/288344
Olmert: Seige on Gaza Will Continue
http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?9506S
Physicians for Human Rights Gaza Update - Another Seasonal Shame
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8172/index.php
Israel's Ongoing Human Rights Violations
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8177/index.php
Red Cross Condemns Gaza Collective Punishment, World Inaction
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/rate/8181/index.php#Article-8181
As Predicted: Gaza Attacked
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8124/index.php
Olmert says "war" on militants in Gaza to continue
Sun Dec 23, 2007
Joseph Nasr
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ruled out dialogue with Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip and vowed to press on with the army's "war" against militants firing cross-border rockets into Israel.
(Israel's own defense staff warned that Israel's imposition of measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza would provoke a violent response. This is a war planned long before Annapolis, and is a continuation of the US/Israeli plot to undermine Hamas. Israel has created the 'crisis' which it is now trying to use to justify its premeditated Aggression. Censoring the U.S. Role in Gaza’s 'Civil War' winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?8998S )
Olmert's closest confidant said Israel's strategic goal was to topple the Hamas government in the coastal territory through continued military and economic pressure.
(This is illegal.)
"This war will continue," Olmert told government ministers, referring to stepped up Israeli attacks that have killed over 20 Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in the past week.
(And how many civilians?)
Olmert appeared to play down prospects of a ceasefire deal with Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
(After a failed coup attempt directed by the US and Israel. They always seem to 'forget' to include that part!)
"The state of Israel has no interest in holding negotiations with those that refuse to accept the basic principles of the Quartet," Olmert said referring to the demands set out by the Quartet of Middle East mediators.
(Israel itself has rejected those basic principles.)
"This applies to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and anyone else. He who accepts the Quartet principles is a partner in talks, but he who is not ready to accept them, he is no partner and our policy will not change," Olmert said.
(This is Israel's way of scuttling any chance of peace.)
Hamas has brushed aside demands by the Quartet, composed of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace agreements.
(Because when it signalled its readiness to do this, the US and Israel tried to overthrow it.)
Hamas did not rule out a future ceasefire if Israel first stopped attacks on the Gaza Strip.
"If the occupation commits itself to stopping all forms of aggression against our people, only then the factions may discuss this issue. But until then, there is no discussion among the factions over a calm," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Asked on Israel Radio whether Israel was seeking to "topple" Hamas, Vice Premier Haim Ramon said: "Yes."
"We are fighting Hamas and are seeking to weaken its control of Gaza, and bring about the end of its rein there. Hamas should hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to Abbas's West Bank-based government.
Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
(But Israel would rather reject peace, and continue its war to wipe Palestine off the map.)
The Islamist group continues to say it will not formally recognize Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
(It won't recognize Israel as a JEWISH state, because that is a racist concept. It could never destroy Israel, and amending this would be a point of negotiations.)
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; writing by Adam Entous; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAL2334822220071223
Who won the election?
Ian Williams
June 20, 2007 3:00 PM
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/06/so_who_won_the_palesti
If Israelis want peace, they have to talk to the people the Palestinians want, not those anointed and armed by Israel and the US.
One of the points about democracy is that sometimes the "wrong" people win. Many Americans and British looking at their present leaders can ruefully relate to that. Indeed, Ehud Olmert has popularity ratings within a statistical range of zero. Nonetheless, other governments and the political institutions inside their own countries continue to talk to them and recognize them. The rest of the world continued talking to, indeed pandering to Israel, even while the butcher of Sabra and Shatila was its prime minister. That's democracy.
The purpose of the Palestinian elections was to elect a government the Palestinians wanted, not one that Israel liked. Hamas won, fair and square, and did so against a background of Fatah incompetence and corruption that had been connived at, and indeed tacitly encouraged by the west and Israel, in return for Yasser Arafat's pliability at the negotiating table.
Now as a born-again atheist, whose last book was an ode to rum, Hamas would be very low down in my list of preferences for voting - indeed somewhere alongside a teetotal born-again Christian from Texas for US president in my ranking order.
Even so, Hamas has been demonized by Israel, the US, and the EU, which should give pause for thought. A rule of thumb suggests that Washington and its allies may not be entirely accurate in their depiction of events.
Firstly, we need to consider the historic shifts as opposed to the expedient amnesia of politicians. At a time when the US and Israel were marginalizing and refusing to recognize Arafat and the PLO, as Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, baldly stated: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO." At that time, the PLO was seen as representing the secularist, leftwards-inclined factions so a dose of good old time religion seemed to be called for.
As Hamas developed, a secondary point was that the last thing that hard-line Israeli factions, of the kind who seem to be running the security services, wanted was a partner who will negotiate. There is no conceivable negotiated solution that does not involve withdrawal from the occupied territories and recognition of genuinely independent Palestinian statehood that even now, few Israeli politicians have unequivocally supported.
That is why, of course, there is a suspicious, what one could call a statistically significant correlation, between Hamas's acceptance of cease-fires, and Israeli assassinations of its leadership. There are times when Israeli security forces to seem to function as as if they were the militias of right-wing Israeli factions.
In response to the Hamas victory, and despite its unilateral ceasefire, Israel illegally withheld the taxes it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian authority and led a boycott of the new Hamas government, an example followed naturally by the US, cravenly by the European Union, and implicitly endorsed even more shamefully by the UN Secretariat.
As the former UN representative Alvaro de Soto revealed, the US tactic was to get Fatah to sort out Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is being represented as if it were a Hamas coup against the Palestinian government. But Hamas won the election and has a majority in the parliament - even if 40 of their representatives have been interned by the Israelis. It is almost as if Blair dissolved parliament and sent the army against Brown supporters.
The Palestinian authority forces that Hamas inherited were in effect a group of militias responsible to various factions of Fatah. Israel happily agreed to them being armed to quell Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is above all the responsibility of the gun-worshippers on both sides. There is little to choose between the assorted armed militias now shooting it out. But those who crammed a million and half people into a ghetto, restricted their water supplies, bombed their power stations, cut off funding for government services and occasionally lob shells and "precision" bombs into their apartments cannot escape their responsibility for the carnage.
Just as those in Washington and London who let Israel continue to rip up the road map, expand settlements and build a wall were far more effective campaign managers for Hamas's election victory than Saatchi & Saatchi could have been.
A credible Palestinian partner for peace negotiations is one that can represent Palestinians and bring them along. Anointing Abbas as the chosen one of Israel and the US has likely ensured that he is not that partner. But the Palestinians have to choose their negotiator, not Olmert or Bush.
Physicians for Human Rights Gaza Update - Another Seasonal Shame
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8172/index.php
Israel's Ongoing Human Rights Violations
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8177/index.php
Red Cross Condemns Gaza Collective Punishment, World Inaction
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/rate/8181/index.php#Article-8181
As Predicted: Gaza Attacked
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8124/index.php
ALERT: Annapolis a Charade: Olmert Plotting Massive Aggression
The timing is interesting, given the upcoming "Annapolis Conference", which serves to be about PR alone, as Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations or Compromise in the name of peace.
If you follow the events surrounding Israel's "Disengagement" from Gaza, you will quickly understand that this was the plan all along. While Israel was making a public spectacle of "forcing Jews to leave their homes", it was quietly surrounding the Strip with artillery emplacements, in an operation ominously named "First Rain".
Under this operation, Gaza basically became a "Free-Fire Zone", and several artillery and gunship strikes killed a high number of civilians. Finally, when one of these batteries fired upon and murdered a Palestinian family - picnicking on a beach that had been Segregated "Jews Only" only weeks before, Hamas finally decided to call an end to its unilateral, two-year cease-fire.
(In essence, they took Israel's bait. After all, you can't excuse your Aggression and label it "defense" if you're not being intermittently attacked. Never mind the hypocrisy underlying the entire media's framing of that whole debate ...)
When the Palestinians responded by electing Hamas to power (yes, elected), Israeli Extremists and their Ideological, bought foreign co-conspirators imposed unilateral sanctions on Gaza, a bit of Collective Punishment which increased the hardship of those stuck in the world's largest Concentration Camp.
When they felt Gaza had been substantially weakened, the US and Israel undertook a Coup attempt, using corrupt elements within the Fatah Party, provoking a violent response by Hamas, which expelled the group. Most of the world's media ignored the events leading to this "crisis", and instead only repeated the Propaganda emanating from the US and Israel, which used this to further increase sanctions against Gaza.
Most recently, Israel stepped up its Collective Punishment, except that human rights groups and legal advisors to the Government halted some of its approved measures, because they run contrary to International Humanitarian Law.
This was sold as another "response to rocket attacks" (again highlighting the hypocrisy of the debate's Framing - are the Palestinians allowed to defend themselves from strikes which actually KILL people ... ?), even though high-ranking officials said that this was NOT, in fact, a response to these attacks, but a way to "distance Israel from Gaza's infrastructure".
The real reason for this whole episode, of course, has been to "soften up" the Gaza Strip for a long-planned military attack, a way to undermine the resolve, and hopefully rid this territory of Palestinians altogether.
winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?9259S
Dec 23, 2007 07:02 PM
Mark Lavie
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM – Israel's prime minister Sunday pledged a war against Gaza militants, rejecting feelers from Hamas for a truce, while an Israeli cabinet minister angered moderate Palestinians with another plan for new Jewish housing in a disputed part of Jerusalem, complicating renewed peace talks.
(Note that it is the Zionist Extremists who are rejecting peace. They will continue to do so as long as nobody actually demands they end their war to wipe Palestine off the map.)
"There is no other way to describe what is happening in the Gaza Strip except as a true war between the Israeli army and terrorist elements," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet, ruling out truce talks.
(Actually, human rights organizations have called it an international crime. Israel plotted this aggression long before Annapolis, and is using the violence it created in order to 'justify' it. Not suprisingly, most Governments and the bulk of the media is letting them get away with it.)
Reports of truce feelers from the embattled Hamas government in Gaza have been surfacing almost daily, and Israeli defence officials have said they are examining the proposals.
The unconfirmed reports have Hamas convincing fellow militants in Gaza to stop their daily rocket fire at southern Israel, while Israel halts its air and ground operations in Gaza.
Speaking to his cabinet at Sunday's weekly meeting, Olmert rejected negotiations with Hamas because it has rejected international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and endorse past peace accords.
(But mainly, this attack on Gaza has been planned for over a year, and he won't let a little thing like peace get in the way of undermining the elected Palestinian Government, and further dividing the Palestinians.)
"We have declared (this war) and we will continue," Olmert said at the beginning of the meeting, which reporters are allowed to attend. "This is true regarding Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all other elements."
Despite their overt rejections of a formal ceasefire, Israeli officials have been saying a formal truce is unnecessary. They say if Gaza militants stop the rocket fire, Israel would have no reason to attack.
(It would have no excuse. It has always intended to attack. That's why it imposed measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza, despite warnings from its own defence staff that this would provoke violence. Israel routinely attacks the W. Bank, even though nobody lobs rockets from there, disproving this statement.)
Israeli air strikes over a two-day period last week killed 12, including two top Islamic Jihad commanders.
(And how many civilians? How many during the entire period of Israeli aggression?)
The truce feelers started surfacing a day later, first in a call from Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh to an Israeli TV reporter and later, according to officials, by way of Egypt, which has mediated several other past truces.
Islamic Jihad, which is (allegedly behind most of the rocket salvos, Sunday again rejected a truce with Israel. By nightfall three rockets fired from Gaza exploded in Israel, causing no damage or casualties, the military said.
("causing no damage or casualties", "causing no damage or casualties", "causing no damage or casualties")
Israeli officials said Defence Minister Ehud Barak will travel this week to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. It was unclear whether a ceasefire would be on the agenda.
Also Sunday, Israel allocated $207 million over five years to develop a system, with the U.S., to knock down missiles like the ones fired from Gaza or during last year's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
(Which was really an attack on the civilians and infrastructure of Lebanon ...)
After Hamas overran Gaza in June, expelling forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel and Egypt closed their borders with Gaza, further worsening the critical economic situation there.
(Actually, they expelled forces loyal to the US and Israel, after a failed coup attempt. This information is not hard to find, suggesting that the media is intentionally misrepresenting this conflict.)
In parallel, the West began promoting the Abbas government in the West Bank, renewing aid cut off after Hamas won a 2006 election.
At last month's peace conference in Annapolis, Md., hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush, Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks for the first time in seven years.
(But it was mainly a way for Bush/Olmert to gain some positive PR, before Israel began attacking Gaza, continuing its illegal and immoral measures against Gaza, stepping up the construction of illegal settlements, and pursuing war with Iran.)
But disputes over Israeli construction in Jerusalem have harmed the atmosphere. Just before the talks restarted, Israel announced a plan to build 307 apartments in Har Homa in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed.
(A war which was provoked by Israel, in the name of annexing further land.)
The international community never recognized Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem, and Palestinians claim the area as the capital of the state they want to create.
(As guaranteed by UN Resolutions.)
On Sunday Rafi Eitan, cabinet minister for Jerusalem affairs, confirmed that the Construction Ministry's proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 new apartments for Har Homa, as well as 240 new apartments in Maaleh Adumim, a major West Bank settlement just outside Jerusalem.
(Including over $250 million in US taxpayer money.)
Eitan told Army radio that Israel never promised to halt construction within the municipal borders of Jerusalem. Eitan called both areas "integral" parts of Jerusalem.
(Such Sophistry! According to Solomon's wisdom, since the Palestinians were willing to give up a portion, but the Israelis weren't, the entire city should be given to the Palestinians ...)
Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said he was "not aware" of the plan to expand Har Homa and said there was "no new decision" for additional construction in Maaleh Adumim.
Abbas charged that the construction projects undermined new peace efforts.
"The negotiations are facing obstacles," Abbas told members of his Fatah party. "We can't understand these settlement activities at a time we're talking about final status negotiations."
The recently revived "road map" peace plan requires Israel to halt all settlement construction.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/288344 Olmert: Seige on Gaza Will Continue
http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?9506S Physicians for Human Rights Gaza Update - Another Seasonal Shame
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8172/index.php Israel's Ongoing Human Rights Violations
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8177/index.php Red Cross Condemns Gaza Collective Punishment, World Inaction
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/rate/8181/index.php#Article-8181 As Predicted: Gaza Attacked
http://www.israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8124/index.php Olmert says "war" on militants in Gaza to continue
Sun Dec 23, 2007
Joseph Nasr
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ruled out dialogue with Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip and vowed to press on with the army's "war" against militants firing cross-border rockets into Israel.
(Israel's own defense staff warned that Israel's imposition of measures of Collective Punishment on Gaza would provoke a violent response. This is a war planned long before Annapolis, and is a continuation of the US/Israeli plot to undermine Hamas. Israel has created the 'crisis' which it is now trying to use to justify its premeditated Aggression. Censoring the U.S. Role in Gaza’s 'Civil War' winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?8998S )
Olmert's closest confidant said Israel's strategic goal was to topple the Hamas government in the coastal territory through continued military and economic pressure.
(This is illegal.)
"This war will continue," Olmert told government ministers, referring to stepped up Israeli attacks that have killed over 20 Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in the past week.
(And how many civilians?)
Olmert appeared to play down prospects of a ceasefire deal with Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
(After a failed coup attempt directed by the US and Israel. They always seem to 'forget' to include that part!)
"The state of Israel has no interest in holding negotiations with those that refuse to accept the basic principles of the Quartet," Olmert said referring to the demands set out by the Quartet of Middle East mediators.
(Israel itself has rejected those basic principles.)
"This applies to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and anyone else. He who accepts the Quartet principles is a partner in talks, but he who is not ready to accept them, he is no partner and our policy will not change," Olmert said.
(This is Israel's way of scuttling any chance of peace.)
Hamas has brushed aside demands by the Quartet, composed of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace agreements.
(Because when it signalled its readiness to do this, the US and Israel tried to overthrow it.)
Hamas did not rule out a future ceasefire if Israel first stopped attacks on the Gaza Strip.
"If the occupation commits itself to stopping all forms of aggression against our people, only then the factions may discuss this issue. But until then, there is no discussion among the factions over a calm," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Asked on Israel Radio whether Israel was seeking to "topple" Hamas, Vice Premier Haim Ramon said: "Yes."
"We are fighting Hamas and are seeking to weaken its control of Gaza, and bring about the end of its rein there. Hamas should hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to Abbas's West Bank-based government.
Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
(But Israel would rather reject peace, and continue its war to wipe Palestine off the map.)
The Islamist group continues to say it will not formally recognize Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
(It won't recognize Israel as a JEWISH state, because that is a racist concept. It could never destroy Israel, and amending this would be a point of negotiations.)
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; writing by Adam Entous; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAL2334822220071223
Who won the election?
Ian Williams
June 20, 2007 3:00 PM
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/06/so_who_won_the_palesti
If Israelis want peace, they have to talk to the people the Palestinians want, not those anointed and armed by Israel and the US.
One of the points about democracy is that sometimes the "wrong" people win. Many Americans and British looking at their present leaders can ruefully relate to that. Indeed, Ehud Olmert has popularity ratings within a statistical range of zero. Nonetheless, other governments and the political institutions inside their own countries continue to talk to them and recognize them. The rest of the world continued talking to, indeed pandering to Israel, even while the butcher of Sabra and Shatila was its prime minister. That's democracy.
The purpose of the Palestinian elections was to elect a government the Palestinians wanted, not one that Israel liked. Hamas won, fair and square, and did so against a background of Fatah incompetence and corruption that had been connived at, and indeed tacitly encouraged by the west and Israel, in return for Yasser Arafat's pliability at the negotiating table.
Now as a born-again atheist, whose last book was an ode to rum, Hamas would be very low down in my list of preferences for voting - indeed somewhere alongside a teetotal born-again Christian from Texas for US president in my ranking order.
Even so, Hamas has been demonized by Israel, the US, and the EU, which should give pause for thought. A rule of thumb suggests that Washington and its allies may not be entirely accurate in their depiction of events.
Firstly, we need to consider the historic shifts as opposed to the expedient amnesia of politicians. At a time when the US and Israel were marginalizing and refusing to recognize Arafat and the PLO, as Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, baldly stated: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO." At that time, the PLO was seen as representing the secularist, leftwards-inclined factions so a dose of good old time religion seemed to be called for.
As Hamas developed, a secondary point was that the last thing that hard-line Israeli factions, of the kind who seem to be running the security services, wanted was a partner who will negotiate. There is no conceivable negotiated solution that does not involve withdrawal from the occupied territories and recognition of genuinely independent Palestinian statehood that even now, few Israeli politicians have unequivocally supported.
That is why, of course, there is a suspicious, what one could call a statistically significant correlation, between Hamas's acceptance of cease-fires, and Israeli assassinations of its leadership. There are times when Israeli security forces to seem to function as as if they were the militias of right-wing Israeli factions.
In response to the Hamas victory, and despite its unilateral ceasefire, Israel illegally withheld the taxes it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian authority and led a boycott of the new Hamas government, an example followed naturally by the US, cravenly by the European Union, and implicitly endorsed even more shamefully by the UN Secretariat.
As the former UN representative Alvaro de Soto revealed, the US tactic was to get Fatah to sort out Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is being represented as if it were a Hamas coup against the Palestinian government. But Hamas won the election and has a majority in the parliament - even if 40 of their representatives have been interned by the Israelis. It is almost as if Blair dissolved parliament and sent the army against Brown supporters.
The Palestinian authority forces that Hamas inherited were in effect a group of militias responsible to various factions of Fatah. Israel happily agreed to them being armed to quell Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is above all the responsibility of the gun-worshippers on both sides. There is little to choose between the assorted armed militias now shooting it out. But those who crammed a million and half people into a ghetto, restricted their water supplies, bombed their power stations, cut off funding for government services and occasionally lob shells and "precision" bombs into their apartments cannot escape their responsibility for the carnage.
Just as those in Washington and London who let Israel continue to rip up the road map, expand settlements and build a wall were far more effective campaign managers for Hamas's election victory than Saatchi & Saatchi could have been.
A credible Palestinian partner for peace negotiations is one that can represent Palestinians and bring them along. Anointing Abbas as the chosen one of Israel and the US has likely ensured that he is not that partner. But the Palestinians have to choose their negotiator, not Olmert or Bush.
Physicians for Human Rights Gaza Update - Another Seasonal Shame
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8172/index.php
Israel's Ongoing Human Rights Violations
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8177/index.php
Red Cross Condemns Gaza Collective Punishment, World Inaction
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/rate/8181/index.php#Article-8181
As Predicted: Gaza Attacked
israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8124/index.php
ALERT: Annapolis a Charade: Olmert Plotting Massive Aggression
The timing is interesting, given the upcoming "Annapolis Conference", which serves to be about PR alone, as Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations or Compromise in the name of peace.
If you follow the events surrounding Israel's "Disengagement" from Gaza, you will quickly understand that this was the plan all along. While Israel was making a public spectacle of "forcing Jews to leave their homes", it was quietly surrounding the Strip with artillery emplacements, in an operation ominously named "First Rain".
Under this operation, Gaza basically became a "Free-Fire Zone", and several artillery and gunship strikes killed a high number of civilians. Finally, when one of these batteries fired upon and murdered a Palestinian family - picnicking on a beach that had been Segregated "Jews Only" only weeks before, Hamas finally decided to call an end to its unilateral, two-year cease-fire.
(In essence, they took Israel's bait. After all, you can't excuse your Aggression and label it "defense" if you're not being intermittently attacked. Never mind the hypocrisy underlying the entire media's framing of that whole debate ...)
When the Palestinians responded by electing Hamas to power (yes, elected), Israeli Extremists and their Ideological, bought foreign co-conspirators imposed unilateral sanctions on Gaza, a bit of Collective Punishment which increased the hardship of those stuck in the world's largest Concentration Camp.
When they felt Gaza had been substantially weakened, the US and Israel undertook a Coup attempt, using corrupt elements within the Fatah Party, provoking a violent response by Hamas, which expelled the group. Most of the world's media ignored the events leading to this "crisis", and instead only repeated the Propaganda emanating from the US and Israel, which used this to further increase sanctions against Gaza.
Most recently, Israel stepped up its Collective Punishment, except that human rights groups and legal advisors to the Government halted some of its approved measures, because they run contrary to International Humanitarian Law.
This was sold as another "response to rocket attacks" (again highlighting the hypocrisy of the debate's Framing - are the Palestinians allowed to defend themselves from strikes which actually KILL people ... ?), even though high-ranking officials said that this was NOT, in fact, a response to these attacks, but a way to "distance Israel from Gaza's infrastructure".
The real reason for this whole episode, of course, has been to "soften up" the Gaza Strip for a long-planned military attack, a way to undermine the resolve, and hopefully rid this territory of Palestinians altogether.
winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?9259S
He wants An Excuse to Follow Long-Held Plans
