A Palestinian suicide bomber struck with provocative timing and devastating force last night, killing 15 Israelis in a suburban snooker club, just as Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was sitting down in Washington for talks with President George Bush.
The explosion at Rishon Letzion blew out ceiling tiles and the picture windows of the third floor hall, hurling people down into the parking lot, Israeli television said. It said at least 50 people were wounded, at least 12 seriously.
"The whole building flew in the air," Hanit Azulai told Israeli Radio. "It looked like a terrible dream."
A man filling up his car at a nearby petrol station said: "People were screaming from the windows. It was a terrible scene. People covered with blood, screaming."
"A Palestinian suicide bomber entered the billiard club and blew himself up inside," Israeli police commander Iftach Duchovny told army radio.
"The bomber came suddenly into the club and blew himself up," said another police commander, Haim Cohen, who described the bomb as "very powerful".
Israeli television stations said the explosive device was in a suitcase carried by the bomber.
Tuesday, May 07, 2002
A complicated agreement to end the 36-day siege of the Church of the Nativity at 2pm yesterday was undone at the last minute by an elementary error of diplomacy: nobody bothered to inform the main player.
Inside the church 123 Palestinian gunmen, clergy and civilians had joined hands in prayer, posed for photographs, and dined on a last supper of spaghetti.
But hopes of ending the standoff foundered as Israeli soldiers began removing barricades ready for the exit of 123 Palestinians trapped inside the church when Italy - whose support was crucial to the deal - announced that it had not been officially consulted.
Under the arrangements overseen by officials from the CIA and the EU, Israel was to withdraw its tanks from outside the church yesterday, freeing the Palestinians trapped inside since April 2.
Thirteen men - hardened Palestinian militants, according to Israel - were to be deported to Italy for an indefinite exile. However, they would not be jailed, and several said they believed their families would join them.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, went out of his way to embarrass the divided US administration yesterday, openly thanking the Americans for scuttling the proposed UN investigation of Palestinian deaths in the West Bank town of Jenin.
His remarks were made only hours before he met George Bush in the White House.
There are sharp differences between Israel and the US about the role of Yasser Arafat and Saudi Arabia in future peace negotiations.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, played an important part in setting up the Jenin mission, in response to Palestinian claims of a massacre. It collapsed last month, because of Israeli opposition, before it even reached the West Bank.
Addressing the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish American pressure group, Mr Sharon hinted heavily that the Bush administration had ultimately helped block the inquiry. "No nation in the world has the right to bring Israel to court," he said.
"I would like to thank the American administration and its leadership that helped us, understood us, and supported us to get out of this trap."
The speech put the administration in an awkward situation by suggesting that the US had acted privately to thwart a mission it supported in public.
Tamara Traubman and Amit Ben Aroya, Ha'aretz Correspondents, Ha'aretz Service and agencies
Fifteen people were killed and 57 people injured when a suicide bomber blew up around 11:00 P.M on Tuesday night at the "Spiel Club" pool hall on Sakharov Street in Rishon Letzion, in the town's new industrial zone.
Eleven of the wounded were in serious condition, 10 sustained moderate injuries and the rest were lightly injured. Ronen Bishari, the deputy director of the Magen David Adom first-aid service said that most of the wounded had been hit by shrapnel or had suffered burns.
The injured were evacuated to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Holon's Wolfson Hospital, and Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tel Aviv.
The blast occurred on the third floor of the building, causing part of the structure to collapse. The other floors of the building were apparently empty at the time of the blast.
May 7 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Tuesday to continue fighting terrorists until they cease to exist, after learning of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed at least 16 people. Sharon spoke to the press just before leaving the United States, cutting short a diplomatic visit. Signaling that the Israeli invasion into Palestinian areas would continue, Sharon said: “He who rises up to kill us, we will rise up and kill him first.”
It has been quite an eye opening week in Gaza.
Things here are far worse than I ever imagined. After having seen what
I have seen it is clear to me who are the "terrorists" and who are the
victims. The Palestinian people live under an overwhelming occupation
that restricts their freedom of movement, of statement, and their very
right to live. I have visited new houses where peopel cannot live because
the nearby Israeli settlement has shot at them so much that they look
like swiss cheese.
Today we had to wait from 7:30 in the morning to around 7pm just to cross
a street. Yes, I said to cross a street. what happens is that Gaza
is actually sliced up into different parts by "Jewish only" roads. We
wanted to get from the southern part of Gaza back up to Gaza city, but
the only road that takes us there is intersected by one of these settler
roads. (by the way, in the Gaza strip there are 4,000 Jewish settlers
who live on 48% of the land, and 1.3 million Palestinians who live on
52% of it. And all the settlements are built in the best strategic areas
and have the best water.)
May 6, 2002
We are being held hostage by the State of Israel, without due process, without free access to a lawyer or a hearing. Nathan Musselman, Nathan Mauger, Tom Kaoutsoukos have begin a hunger strike in conjunction with Trevor Baumgartner, Huwaida Arraf and Jo Harrison who are in their 5th day. Today, 2 of them were hospitalised and despite the fact that blood test show their blood sugar level is dangerously low, they have been returned in to detention. Are demands are clear. We want to leave this country voluntarily and we want a letter from the Ministry of Interior stating that we are not being deported and that there are no prohibitions on future travel to Israel. We will continue our strike until our demands are met.
We are putting out a call to all those who stand for freedom and democracy to take action and help in the case of the internationals who are being held illegally by Israeli forces in Palestine and Israel. NONE of the internationals has so far been arrested, yet already at least two of them have been deported with NO due process. The rest have been denied access to legal aid and have been denied any information as to their ultimate fate. The men are being held at Kiryat Arba, an illegal settlement in al-Khalil (Hebron) where their lives are in danger at this very moment due to the volitale situation brought about by IDF actions recently. We URGE everyone to flood the embassies/ consulates with calls/ emails, showing up in person if needed to express their concern about this blatant violation of international law. If any country other than Israel was doing this, all states involved would have condemned the action. Why the double standard? In particular , the United States government is WELCOMING the Prime Minister of a state that HOLDS U.S. NATIONALS AGAINST THEIR WILL ILLEGALLY!!! Contact whatever media you can and blast the United States on this!
Over the last several months news reports of Bush Administration plans concerning the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein have appeared with relative frequency in the mainstream media. However, with very few exceptions those reports have emphasized either that these are contingency plans that have not been operationalized or the target date has been postponed until next year. In light of some recent circumstantial evidence and on-going signals from the White House, the later story especially, published in the New York Times, now seems like a case of Pentagon disinformation. The invasion of Iraq may be sooner than we are being led to believe by the propaganda machine.
Among the more telling signals not discussed yet in the mainstream media is the revelation that a number of MASH units are being called up to report for duty in July. These same units will be committed up to a 6 month period from the July date, that is, through the fall congressional elections. Added to this is the increasing reserve call-up of troops and the deployment of more warships to the region, including war games in the coming weeks with India. Further evidence of a push for a late summer/early fall invasion is the churning out of weapons, including the so-called "low-yield" nuclear bunker buster bomb.
Resistance to Israeli Rule
Not only has Israel been allowed to prevent a United Nations investigation into serious allegations of war crimes in Jenin by Israeli troops, it has placed Yasser Arafat in a daunting position. He is now seen to have benefited, personally and politically, from the exchange of his freedom for the truth.
In a deal that shocks the conscience, the United States reportedly agreed to shield Israel from action by the U.N. Security Council to enforce its resolution to send a fact-finding team to discover the truth about what happened in the devastated Jenin camp. This was in exchange for lifting the siege on Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have just issued reports accusing Israeli forces of committing serious war crimes in Jenin. These partial and preliminary findings may be the last serious attempts to discover the facts.
Israel, it would seem, is once again to be the exception, shielded by the United States from the enforcement of international law and norms of conduct, allowed to defy any number of U.N. Security Council resolutions with impunity. Since Arafat has become implicated in this exchange as a direct beneficiary, some of the public outrage will inevitably rest on his shoulders. Preferring to change the subject, some official Palestinian rhetoric already has shifted from the "massacre at Jenin" to the "heroic resistance at Jenin."
The Israeli incursion into West Bank towns, the alleged Israeli massacres committed in the Palestinian refugee camps of Jenin, and the spectre of suicide bombers have provoked some stark commentary from luminaries around the world.
In a speech made to members of Seattle's Jewish community, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz warned American Jewry against complacency in the face of what he termed growing global anti-Semitism.
According to an Idaho news portal, Channel 7's KTVB.Com, Schultz told Jewish Americans that "If you leave this synagogue tonight and go back to your home and ignore this, then shame on us." Schultz did not elaborate on whom he referred to as 'us' - Jews, Americans, Israelis, or the general public, leading some to question where his loyalties really were.
Nevertheless, dozens of Jews gathered outside the meeting to protest Israel's invasion of the West Bank and the appalling conditions in which Palestinians live.
"We only get the side that talks about Palestinians as terrorists," Alethea Mundy told Channel 7. She was protesting media bias and coverage of Palestinians in North American media.
BEITAR ILLIT, West Bank (AP) - On what was a bare West Bank hilltop a dozen years ago, construction workers hammer out the walls of yet more new houses in this now massive Jewish settlement.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), who meets Tuesday with President Bush (news - web sites) to discuss efforts to restart peace talks, says he will not uproot any of the settlements built on land the Palestinians claim for their state. Under his government, 34 new hilltop outposts have sprung up.
Israel says they are merely extensions of existing settlements, but Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the new construction sends a clear message that Sharon is more interested in extending Israel's borders than in trying to negotiate peace.
"Sharon is destroying every possibility for peace between our two peoples," Abed Rabbo said.
Bush intends to urge Sharon to curb the settlement building, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said Sunday. "Something has to be done about the problem of the settlements," he said. "The settlements continue to grow and continue to expand."
WASHINGTON (AP) - A nuclear reactor in Ohio is found to have a large hole nobody thought possible, burned almost through its six-inch protective steel cover. Cracks of a type never seen before are discovered at a reactor in South Carolina, triggering widespread inspections.
Both events caught industry leaders and government regulators by surprise, and they are fueling new questions about aging nuclear power plants and plant inspection programs.
The cracks found early last year at the Oconee Unit 3 reactor plant in South Carolina and the hole discovered in March in the steel reactor lid at the Davis Besse plant in Ohio were in areas thought largely impervious to such problems.
"It was material degradation that wasn't expected," acknowledges Alex Marion of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group.
The 25-year-old Davis Besse reactor on the shore of Lake Erie is one of four nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy Corp. It has been shut down since February, waiting for the hole in the reactor dome to be patched.
Sometimes I forget how truly simpleminded the Bushies can be. The front-page of The New York Times reports, "The Bush administration seems to accept and even relish (Attorney General) Ashcroft's role as lightning rod on difficult criminal justice issues."
Since the attorney general has so amply demonstrated his clueless incompetence, it may seem difficult to plumb why it should be so. But it is precisely, you see, because liberals consider John Ashcroft a dangerous nincompoop that the administration thinks he's doing a good job. They really are that simple.
Civilian employees of Dick Cheney's former company are carrying out military missions around the world – for profit.
ISLAMABAD, May 06 (PNS): Local News wire service "Online" claims that more than 2000 British-led Special Commando forces, joined by the US and Canadian troops, under "Operation Snipe" are gearing up efforts to launch a major attack to rescue around 76 soldiers who were arrested by the Taliban and Al Qaida forces during the battle in the snow covered Arma Peaks of Paktia Province in March this year.
May 6, 2002—My parents grew up as Republicans in and around Kansas City, Mo. But I doubt that political convictions are necessarily handed down by one's parents. At the time I grew up (my formative years being the mid-60s to the mid-70s), one was always more likely to counter the views of one's parents rather than parrot them. That was in the days when the cry "REVOLUTION NOW!" was a pop icon. Anything we could do to piss off our parents was the order of the day.
Curiously though, my politics haven't changed much over the years. What is even more curious is that those same people who used to say that I was maybe a step or two to the right of Attila the Hun, now say that I may well be somewhere to the left of Mao Tse-tung. This, however, is neither a good nor a bad thing on anybody's part. I've heard it said that "the only thing sadder than a young Republican is an old Democrat."
My family's Republican tradition started when the party was young. I would bid younger readers to look to their textbooks for the days when the Republican Party espoused social consciousness and environmental protection. The Democratic Party was once the party of wealthy southern landowners, who espoused the virtues of local government that protected their legal ability to hold slaves.
May 6, 2002—How does one describe a government that is intent upon the destruction of "government?" The word contrarian comes to mind because it is, for all intents and purposes, an anti-government movement within the government.
There are those among the citizenry that wish to see the end of the government for a variety of reasons. Some associated with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were "dooms dayers" or "cultists" and wished a departure from our society—it appears they got their wish. Some militias have attempted secession from the United States (Bo Gritz of Idaho, the Texas Constitutional Militia and the Freemen in Montana come to mind). We can see from the actions of George W. Bush and his administration that he, too, wishes to end our government as we have known it.
Bush has taken our Securities and Exchange Commission and given it to the very folks that it is to monitor. He has taken the Environmental Protection Agency and given it to the polluters. He has taken the State Department and given it to a radical fringe. He has taken the Justice Department and given it to a fundamentalist zealot. He has taken the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and given it to the power companies. He has taken the Department of the Interior and given it to the companies that will profit from the removal of natural resources.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon brought his case to Washington yesterday for banishing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from peace talks, signaling an unwillingness to embark on a new political process until the Palestinian Authority undergoes major internal reform.
With Sharon scheduled to visit President Bush today, an Israeli delegation headed by the prime minister stepped up efforts in meetings with senior U.S. officials to ensure that the administration's new Middle East initiative does not move faster than Israel would like or diverge from its interests.
WASHINGTON, May 6 — California’s two senators called for a criminal probe into Enron Corp.’s trading activities Monday after federal energy regulators released documents describing how the bankrupt energy giant used trading strategies with names like “Death Star” and “Fat Boy” to manipulate electricity supplies and boost profits in the state.
Gaza City, May 6, 2002)The makeshift tank barricade on my street is gone. The twin piles of sand were probably never meant to do much more than provide area residents like myself with some sense of security. I think it only had the opposite effect on me, however. And while the removal of some defensive barriers in Gaza City could be an indication of better times ahead, the majority still remain, ringing the area. The most pathetic perhaps, are the four-foot sand walls lining the beaches along the Mediterranean.
But one can not deny a sense of relief in Gaza. The unannounced blockade of goods and food imposed at the Israeli controlled entry points has been eased. When I’m found at a store buying bundles of vegetables, it is no longer taken as a sign of a foreigner with foreknowledge of an impending invasion. Conversations on the issue have waned, giving way to speculation about what the West Bank will end up like. These are my final days in Palestine.
I feel the guilt of leaving pressing down on me. I can do things my friends here cannot. It has nothing to do with how hard I’ve worked, how wealthy they are, or what dreams any of us have. I can leave Gaza and they cannot. In a few days I’ll be quaffing beers in a Brussels pub and a little after that immersing in a Wisconsin spring brooding over my credit card debts. They will still be here.
(Beit Hanina, Palestine, 6 May 2002)---The breaking points are sometimes small, innocuous. You can't sleep for a week because the Israeli shelling is so bad, there are continuous and horrible reports of death, but we're fine- "I'm fine. No, I'm ok. Really."--- then something as silly as trying to fold an omelette in the frying pan, it breaking, and then- the tears fall.
But other times, your numbness breaks at what you are seeing in front of you. 6am at Qalandia checkpoint. As I approach the checkpoint I am amazed at the line-ups. Is The Cage gone? It seems as though there are just line-ups...but as I get closer I see that it is still there- the 10-foot high fence wire cage where the Palestinians are lined up to be able to cross the checkpoint.
I stand in the line, the one which is vaguely for women, children and older men. But the lines are not moving. The checkpoint in enclosed in thick spools of barbed wire; some women crossing from the other side get their dresses caught as they try to step over it. One woman -carrying her small child- trips on a stray sandbag, but manages not to fall into the sharp grey metal.
There is a halo of blood on the ground where Huda died while sleeping last Tuesday night. Toddler-sized diapers lie strewn on the ground among the concrete heaps where the bedroom wall once was, and a single blue sandal, tiny as my fist, sat perched in a corner of the room on a wooden slab. Huda was 11 months old.
Her mother is in the hospital recovering from her injuries. A pretty, paper-flower ceiling ornament that she made for her daughter still hangs, grit covered above the child’s former room. Sun pours in like golden dust where the other half of the ceiling has disappeared into sky. Deep tank tracks advance almost as far as the back door to the house. Looking at them makes you tremble: four tank shells were fired in the middle of the night at the family in this small home. One shell overshot the house entirely and landed in the road beyond the house. Local boys brought it over to me to examine. It is a huge, ugly lump of gray-blue metal.
NEW YORK - Former President Bill Clinton said a coalition of American-backed international troops would be necessary to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Clinton told about 2,000 Hunter College students in New York City that the world's greatest challenge is working toward an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. He said that will require a coalition of American, Russian and European troops.
"I do believe it will have to be, if not imposed, at least strongly pushed," he said. "I believe it will require international forces ... and I think we ought to show up and do it."
Clinton, who was intimately involved in the Mideast peace process during his presidency, failed to cajole the Israelis and Palestinians into reaching an agreement at the Camp David summit in July 2000.
At 12:42 p.m. on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, John McCain strode to a podium on the Senate floor. In his hand was a list of 245 items that had been added into the 2002 defense appropriations bill. Among his colleagues, McCain had a reputation as an acerbic critic of wasteful Pentagon spending. The reputation was richly deserved. In the past year, McCain had delivered 18 speeches on the Senate floor decrying his colleagues' seemingly insatiable appetite for pork. Over the years, the former prisoner of war had made hundreds of such speeches, flaying senators for the pet projects his sharp-eyed staffers ferreted out of the massive defense-spending bills. Even to McCain's jaded eye, however, the spending bill before the Senate that day was especially disturbing. Many of the 245 items on his list, he believed, were egregious. But one in particular stood out. It was a $20 billion Air Force plan to lease 100 refueling tankers from the Boeing Aircraft Co. The planes would cost $150 million apiece. The lease would run for 10 years. Then the Air Force would pay $30 million to reconfigure each of the 767s for commercial use and give the planes back to Boeing. In his 15 years in the Senate, John McCain had never seen such audacity.
A serious legal argument can be made that sanctions imposed against Iraq in 1990 by the United Nations have come to constitute genocide.
Sanctions -- which will come up for renewal in Congress this month -- were originally instituted to compel Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq refused, and was forced out militarily in early 1991 through Operation Desert Storm. Sanctions against Iraq -- a country devastated by war, dependent on oil exports for 90 percent of its foreign revenue and one which imports 70 percent of its food -- were nonetheless re-imposed after the Gulf War.
The vanquished country was faced with a long list of demands, chief among them that it submit to extensive inspections and surrender its weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi government's overall failure to satisfy the demands of the United Nations are a matter of record and are not in dispute here. The same is true of the autocratic, even murderous character of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
“A MONTH too late” is the mantra among British Marines in Afghanistan as they search fruitlessly for Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters through some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world.
Far from being a military triumph, it is now clear that Operation Anaconda in March allowed significant numbers of guerrillas to flee across the Pakistani border.
Just as December’s fighting in the Tora Bora Mountains failed to kill or capture the radical leadership because there was no flanking move along the Pakistan border to capture escapers, so in Operation Snipe, British troops are closing the stable door more than four weeks after their foe has bolted.
Military service is mandatory in South Korea - a country still technically at war with its neighbour, North Korea.
But in recent years, more people are questioning the compulsory nature of military service.
There are currently 1,600 people in prison for refusing the draft for religious and moral reasons. The current law makes no provision for conscientious objectors, who can face up to three years in prison.
But the Constitutional Court is currently reviewing the law - which many believe represents a violation of people's basic human rights to freedom of thought and religion.
THE United Nations yesterday condemned as a war crime the killing of 108 people in a Colombian church and said the government was partly to blame for the tragedy.
Battles still raged around the battered community of Bojayá where the 108, 45 of them children, died when a mortar bomb was lobbed into the church where they were seeking refuge from fighting between Marxist guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and right-wing paramilitaries. The people of this small town, in the remote jungle province of Chocó, yesterday managed to recover their dead, using lulls in the fighting to pick up their loved ones.
"Some of the bodies were so ripped up it was practically impossible to identify them. Many are just body parts, some have heads which we were able to identify," said one horrified doctor who had gone in with a rescue helicopters to evacuate wounded. The doctor, who preferred not to give her name, sat in a hospital in MedellÃn, almost unable to put into words the carnage she had witnessed.
JENIN, West Bank –– The snapping of a tank tread, rather than an explosion, produced the loud noise that spooked Israeli soldiers who then opened fire on nearby Palestinians, killing a mother and her two preschool children, the Israeli military said Monday.
The military initially said a mine went off near the tank on Sunday. Searching for Palestinians they believed might have placed the explosives, members of the tank crew opened fire on nearby Palestinians.
The tank fire killed a 30-year-old Palestinian woman farmer and her children, ages four and six, who were picking grape leaves in the area, southwest of the Palestinian city of Jenin, Palestinian witnesses said.
The army expressed regret for the killings and said it would investigate the shooting. Military investigators found no traces of a bomb in the area, and an inspection of the tank found that its tread had come loose, causing the sound of an explosion that misled the crew, an army spokesman said Monday.
WASHINGTON –– Israeli authorities have arrested two Americans affiliated with relief organizations, including a Muslim commentator who recently described by telephone and in e-mails the destruction he saw in Jenin, a supporter said Monday.
Riad Abdelkarim, a physician from the Los Angeles area, was detained Sunday at Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport while trying to return to the United States, said Khalid Turaani of the Washington-based American Muslims for Jerusalem. Israeli authorities called his wife in California on Sunday and urged her to hire an attorney, Turaani said.
Abdelkarim, who has written opinion pieces on Muslim issues for major U.S. newspapers, serves on the board of American Muslims for Jerusalem and chairman of a new charity, Kinder-USA, organized to provide aid to Palestinian children. Abdelkarim also is the Western region communications director for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Monday, May 06, 2002
No one deluded himself that the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, which takes up five of the eight floors of a new building in the center of El Bireh, would be spared the fate of other Palestinian Authority offices in Ramallah and other cities - that is, the nearly total destruction of its contents and particularly its high-tech equipment.
After all, Israel Defense Forces troops were deployed in the building for about a month.
Armed vehicles were always parked in front of the building, around which the familiar pictures of destruction accumulated; crushed cars, banks of earth, deep ditches in the roads, broken pavements, dismantled stone fences, toppling electricity poles, loose cables and clouds of dust and dirt enveloping every vehicle, tree and roof in thickening layers.
Sunday, May 05, 2002
Israeli and Palestinian sources say they have reached a draft agreement to end the standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Details have not yet been published, but it is understood that some of the Palestinians whose arrest Israel has been demanding will go to Gaza and others will be exiled, perhaps to Italy.
The deal comes as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrives in the United States where he is scheduled to meet President George W Bush on Tuesday.
More than 200 Palestinians, including about 30 gunmen, fled into the church 2 April.
It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.
Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.
The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke.
Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza.
He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge.
Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy agency, concluded he died of a stroke.
1 LUCKY MAN, by Michael J. Fox. (Hyperion, $22.95.) A memoir by the film and television actor, who was told a decade ago that he had Parkinson's disease.
2 FIND ME, by Rosie O'Donnell. (Warner, $23.95.) The actress and talk show host discusses her childhood, her motherhood and, especially, her long-distance friendship with an unwed teenage mother-to-be.
3 MASTER OF THE SENATE, by Robert A. Caro. (Knopf, $35.) The third book in a multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, covering the years 1949 to 1960. First Chapter
4 *STUPID WHITE MEN, by Michael Moore. (ReganBooks/ HarperCollins, $24.95.) The man behind "Roger & Me" takes aim at Republicans and Democrats, corporate America and our "nation of idiots."
George W. Bush’
THE BOOK, WHICH Moore describes as “a vicious broadside against George W. Bush,” is now entering its ninth week on best-seller lists around the country. In spite of almost being pulled by its publisher and then largely ignored by the major media, Moore’s essay collection—on topics ranging from American racism to Middle East violence to instructions for men on putting down the toilet seat—has touched an unexpected chord in centers ranging from New York to Atlanta to Los Angeles.
“The publisher told me before the book came out that [I was] out of touch with the American people, so don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t do well,” says Moore, who is probably best known for his documentary “Roger & Me” on General Motors. “Clearly I wasn’t the one out of touch.” Moore spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Arlene Getz in New York. Excerpts:
(Ramallah, Palestine, 5 May 2002)-- The following is an email written by Huwaida Arraf, one of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and regular contributor to Live from Palestine. Updates to follow. [AB]
Friends,
We succeeded to get foodstuffs and “international protection” into the Church of the Nativity! If you haven’t yet seen the reports, please see below.
The 13 of us that were detained after the action have just been released for a few hours, I think. We were 8 guys and 5 ladies. After over 7 hours of being detained and questioned by the Israeli military, we were finally hand-cuffed and escorted out of Bethlehem. At the Bethlehem checkpoint, the guys and girls were divided. The five ladies were pushed into the floor of a police jeep and our legs were bound. The Israeli police officers drove around for a while then stopped and pulled one girl out - Ida Fasten, from Sweden, cut her loose and left her, in the middle of we don’t know where, by herself. We were horrified! They had taken all of our phones and identification, and it was 2am. When I protested leaving a foreign woman out in the middle of unfamiliar territory in the middle of the night, with no phone and no ID, I was physically assaulted -- slapped hard in the face by one of the officers. Both officers in the jeep refused to give us their names and badge numbers, despite repeated requests.
Israeli occupation forces carried out a number of incursions into the Gaza Strip since Thursday night, killing one person and detaining five others. According to Palestinian security sources, Israeli occupation forces shelled a national security outpost at the entrance of Al-Qararah town today, killing 24 year-old Ramzi Eid and destroying the outpost completely.
In addition, Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire toward hundreds of residents at Al-Qararah military roadblock. Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli occupation soldiers detained a number of the residents after forcing them to undress.
Earlier on Thursday night, the Israeli occupation army's assault on Rafah resulted in killing 45 year-old Sabha Ghanem and injuring at least four other civilians.
RAMALLAH: UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson yesterday called for an independent investigation into recent events in the Jenin refugee camp and urged Israeli authorities to seriously consider a report by Human Rights Watch that its soldiers committed war crimes.
The destructions of the Israeli army is enormous and it prooves that the Sharon-government wanted also the complete destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure.
May 5, 2002: The siege at Nativity Church continues: On the Holy day of Easter, the Nativity Church, the accepted birthplace of Jesus Christ, remains under siege. There are, and have been, conflicting reports in the media concerning the situation inide the church and the treatment of some of those inside. The ISM witnesses want to make clear that they have been given unhindered and unrestricted access to both the church complex and the people within. They absolutely refute allegations of hostage taking.
Some food arrives into the church this morning, however, this was no more than an IOF PR exercise. read more.....
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May 4, 2002: 23.30: Picture this - a Middle East Country is holding American citizens against their will in a prison and refuses to allow them access to legal representation, refuses to give them information as to what will happen to them and has been physically abusive during the detention process. If you responded "the US Marines would be heading over now", you are obviously thinking of any state OTHER than Israel. The above scenerio is currently going on with our US detainees. Hopefully the United States government will not continue to allow them to languish in prison!
23.00: A suposed bomb factory has been discovered by IDF forces inside the restricted area that they have been scouring for the last four weeks. We find it highly interesting that the IDF has searched every house in this area and yet never discovered what they describe as a "TNT Laboratory". This, coupled with our activists getting inside the church, does not leave one with a high opinion of IDF effectiveness. 16.30: Our people inside the church have reported on the damage due to recent firefights. In almost every case, glass from broken windows is INSIDE the church. This information, which we are documenting, shows that most gunfire was initiated by the IDF. Reports inside also indicate severe malnourishment due to Israeli refusal of any humanitarian aid deliveries. 12.00: A Palestinian father of eleven was fatally shot by Israeli snipers this morning as he was hanging clothes up near a window. He was shot in the lungs and died en route to the hospital. Also, some of the internationals who are being forcibly deported and held at seperate locations including men being held illegally in Hebron have announced that they are beginning a hunger strike to protest being denied access to legal representation as well as information as to their ultimate fate.
9.30: The fate of the detainees: Twelve internationals are being forcibly deported by Israel for attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians inside the Nativity Church. Some are being held at Ben Gurion airport, pending deportation later today. SInce their arrest they have been refusing food and water to protest the ongoing and escalating abuses of human rights by Israel.
They call us "self-hating" Jews when we raise criticisms of Israeli policies. Yet most of those Jews who risk this calumny as the cost of getting involved actually feel a special resonance with the history and culture of the Jews--because this is a people who have proclaimed a message of love, justice and peace; they feel a special pride in being part of a people who have insisted on the possibility of tikkun, a Hebrew word expressing a belief that the world can be fundamentally healed and transformed. A Los Angeles Times poll in 1988 found that some 50 percent of Jews polled identified "a commitment to social equality" as the characteristic most important to their Jewish identity. Only 17 percent cited a commitment to Israel. No wonder, then, that social-justice-oriented American Jews today feel betrayed by Israeli policies that seem transparently immoral and self-destructive.
Social justice Jews are not apologists for Palestinian violence. We are outraged by the immoral acts of Palestinian terrorists who blow up Israelis at Seder tables, or while they shop, or sit in cafes, or ride in buses. We know that these acts of murder cannot be excused. But many of us also understand that Israeli treatment of Palestinians has been immoral and outrageous. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in 1948, and recent research by Israeli historians has shown most fled not because they were responding to the appeal of Arab leaders but because they feared acts of violence by right-wing Israeli terrorists or were forced from their homes by the Israeli army. Palestinian refugees and their families now number more than 3 million, and many live in horrifying conditions in refugee camps under Israeli military rule.
IDF forces foiled an infiltration attempt near the Kissufim junction on the Gaza Strip border fence Sunday night. Soldiers, who identified two Palestinians who crossed the fence, opened fire.
A large number of reinforcements were brought into the area and, in the ensuing gun battle, an Israeli soldier was lightly injured.
Ealier Sunday, a Palestinian woman and her two children were killed Sunday when an IDF tank opened fire near the West Bank town of Jenin after an explosive device detonated near the tank. An IDF soldier who was lightly wounded in the incident received treatment in the field.
The soldiers opened fire after spotting suspicious figures in a nearby grove, killing the woman and her two children, the military said.
The Jenin refugee camp's jagged concrete hillside of homes-turned-into-graves has yet to yield all its secrets. It is here, Palestinians charge, that Israel perpetrated a "massacre" during its April incursion into the territories. And while Israel stridently denies those charges, international human rights groups are now saying there is evidence that the Israeli army committed serious abuses of international humanitarian law.
"What was striking is what was absent," said Amnesty International delegation member Derrick Pounder at a press conference. "There were very few bodies in the hospital. There were also none who were seriously injured, only the 'walking wounded.' Thus we have to ask, Where are the bodies and where are the seriously injured?'' Amnesty's research shows that the Israeli army did not allow humanitarian assistance into the camp for thirteen days, used Palestinians as human shields, and may have carried out extrajudicial executions and damaged property over and above that required by military necessity. All of these are breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, of which Israel is a signatory.
The charges are so serious that the United Nations dispatched its own team of fact-finders to investigate. Israel says the accusations are patently false. "The intelligence that the company commander in Jenin received is that there aren't that many civilians, but that most of them were terrorists," Israel Defense Forces brigade chief of staff Major Rafi Lederman told the press. "In the Jenin refugee camp alone, 3.5 tons of terrorist weaponry welcomed the IDF forces that entered. Many bombs exploded on our forces." Twenty- three soldiers were lost in the battle, a fact that Israel says proves the morality of its army. "From a military perspective, it would have been very easy to bomb the camp from the sky. The army went from house to house so as not to harm civilians," said brigade doctor David Tzengan.
No reporter in America has been more penetrating, illuminating, and controversial in reporting on the war in Afghanistan—and on the accompanying foreign policy implications—than Seymour Hersh in the pages of The New Yorker. (His work there made him a finalist in the reporting category of the National Magazine Awards, whose winners were announced Wednesday; he lost to The Atlantic Monthly's William Langewiesche.)
A PENTAGON general with a key role in running the war against terrorism who was publicly chastised by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, has suddenly requested early retirement.
"It is a square hole and I am a round peg," said Lt Gen Gregory Newbold, who is stepping down as director of operations on the joint chiefs of staff and returning to civilian life in the summer.
He suggested that he would be happier working in the power tools section of a DIY store.
"I'm looking forward to a job that doesn't have the intensity and lack the quality of life that this one has."
Gen Newbold, 53, did not mention Mr Rumsfeld in an interview with the Washington Post, but several sources said he had grown tired of the Pentagon chief's abrasive style.
Several Arab-American groups have called on House Republican Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) to apologize for remarks he made during a recent television interview about the Palestinian pursuit of statehood.
The groups contend that Armey called for an "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians, during an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball program earlier this week.
According to a program transcript, Armey said, "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank."
Matthews then asked Armey, "Well, where do you put the Palestinian state, in Norway?" Armey responded, "There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state."
When Matthews asked whether Armey believed "the Palestinians who are now living on the West Bank should get out of there?" Armey replied, "Yes."
A spokesman for the Council of American-Islamic Relations called Armey's views "insane."
NUHA KHOURI'S hands dance as she speaks, slice the air when she is angry, twirl when she is exasperated, form boxes as she tries to explain a concept and gently come together on her lap when she concludes.
At the sound of an Israeli armored vehicle rumbling past her house, she shrinks, at first, and then seethes.
"Nobody has the right to decide if I can come out of my house," she said. "Not some young man sitting in a tank who, if he changes the angle, can destroy my house."
At 36, Ms. Khouri may be one of the United States' best hopes for a durable peace in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
She lived in the United States for 15 years, received four degrees from the University of Michigan and returned here voluntarily after the signing of the Oslo accord to build a nation. She represents the thousands of Palestinians who studied or worked abroad and returned here at the prospect of peace. It was hoped that they would serve as an influential, moderating force, but the recent Israeli offensive has undermined them in the eyes of other Palestinians and tested their own beliefs.
NEW YORK - The United Nations General Assembly is due hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday in what is expected to be a condemnation of Israel for its role in scuttling the international body's fact-finding probe of what happened in the Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield.
Incensed that General Secretary Kofi Annan abandoned the fact-finding mission because of Israeli objections on Thursday, Arab states said they would take their fight to an emergency session of the General Assembly.
In a draft resolution, the Arab states are demanding that Annan present a report on Jenin and other Palestinian cities by "drawing upon the available resources and information." The group demanded that it receive the report two weeks after the resolution is adopted.
Annan said on Friday that if asked by the General Assembly, the United Nations could put together a report about the Jenin events. The United States said on Friday that it had questions about humanitarian access to the Jenin refugee camp after the Israeli operation there last month.
NEW YORK: The Bush administration has decided to renounce formally any involvement in a treaty setting up an international criminal court and is expected to declare that the signing of the document by Clinton administration is no longer valid.
The "unsigning" of the treaty, which is expected to be announced on Monday, will be a decisive rejection by the White House of the concept of a permanent tribunal designed to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes, the New York Times reported.
The administration has long argued that the court has the potential to create havoc for the United States, exposing US soldiers and officials overseas to capricious and mischievous prosecutions.
"We think it was a mistake to have signed it," an administration official was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank: Their tables are laden with colored eggs and pastries, but Orthodox Christians in the town of Christ's birthplace are glum as they prepare to celebrate Easter under an Israeli curfew.
"It is the first time in 2,000 years that such a thing happens. The Christians cannot go to church, the Muslims cannot go to the mosque", said Greek Orthodox priest Jiryis Marzuka, who regularly celebrates the eucharist at the Church of the Nativity, besieged for the past month by the Israeli army.
Stuck at home with his wife and children by the Israeli-imposed curfew, Father Marzuka fears he may not even be able to attend any service this Easter.
For many centuries, a procession has departed from Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christians believe Jesus was buried, carrying a candle-lit lantern to Bethlehem some 10 kilometres (six miles) to the south.
Knowing how much Americans are worried about the loss of innocent life in Palestine, I thought I'd summarize the number of Palestinians killed in the past 17 months.
This number does not include all those killed in Israel's most recent military invasion of the West Bank. They are still finding bodies in the rubble. This number represents only those killed through March 9, 2002.
The toll of Palestinian children 15 and younger is 151. That's a lot of Little League teams. Many of these children were shot through the head by Israeli snipers who, 200 yards away in armored vests and helmets, apparently feared a rock thrown by a 12-year-old that landed many yards short. I can easily imagine killing people. After all, I was in the Army. I cannot imagine lining up a child's head in the scope of my rifle and squeezing the trigger.
Another 138 Palestinians ages 16 to 18 also have been killed by the Israelis. The total number of Palestinians killed during this period is 1,286, of whom 83.8 percent were civilians. The rest, 208, were members of the Palestinian police and security forces, which might be one reason Yasser Arafat has had some trouble controlling terrorists.
UNITED NATIONS: Palestinian and Israeli diplomats separately criticised the Security Council during a public debate Friday on Israel's rejection of a UN fact-finding mission to the Jenin refugee camp.
Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the UN, said the council failed to give the full weight of its support to Secretary General Kofi Annan when he set up the mission and later caved in to Israel's "blackmailing".
Annan, citing Israel's repeated objections to the composition and mandate of the team, disbanded it Thursday before it had even set foot in the Middle East.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said on Saturday that Israel should first withdraw from re-occupied Palestinian areas before there could be any discussion of a Middle East peace conference.
Maher was responding to reporters about plans announced by the United States to hold such a peace conference this summer.
"The first step before any talk about any meeting or conference...is the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian land which it occupied in the recent weeks and confirmation of Israel's commitment not to return under any pretext," Maher told reporters.
Maher said any such gathering should include Israelis and Palestinians, as well as Lebanon and Syria, both of which do not have peace agreements with Israel.
WASHINGTON: The US continued its stinging attack on Yasser Arafat saying the Palestinian leader has yet to earn its trust on the issues of combating terrorism, corruption and rule of law.
"Yasser Arafat, on the questions of fighting terrorism, corruption and rule of law, has not earned our trust. And these are all issues that the President (Bush) will watch and monitor." White Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said on Friday.
Fleischer said US believes that the primary duty of Palestinian Authority was to provide its people with a state where rule of law, transperency and lack of corruption prevails.
Middle East » A hardening mood allows authorities to restrict news and stifle critics – even the army's heroine has been silenced
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
YASSER ARAFAT walked free early today after Israeli troops lifted their siege of his compound in Ramallah.
The Palestinian leader's release, following 34 days of being trapped, came as British and American officials took custody of six wanted men, a key Israeli demand for ending the stand-off.
There was jubilation inside the badly damaged compound as the last Israeli tanks roared off into the night and men draped in Palestinian flags rushed over the earth barricades to greet their leader.
But the mood quickly turned to anger. Reports reached Ramallah of a gun battle around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is also surrounded by Israeli troops, and a fire at the Catholic monastery there.
Incandescent with anger, Mr Arafat said: "It is not important what happened to me here. What is important is what is happening at the Church of the Nativity. It is a crime."
Israeli forces have completed their withdrawal from the ravaged compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah following a deal transferring six Palestinians to international custody.
The pull-out means an end of Mr Arafat's confinement in Ramallah where tanks besieged his headquarters for more than a month.
In his first public comments after the withdrawal, an emotional Mr Arafat condemned the continuing stand-off at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where renewed clashes broke out during Wednesday night.
Heavy exchanges of gunfire and explosions were heard, and sources inside the Church compound said a number of fires were burning.
A furious Yasser Arafat last night emerged from five months confined to his Ramallah compound denouncing Israel even as it withdrew its tanks and troops to the cheers of Palestinian fighters.
As Mr Arafat was freed, fighting broke out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - where another siege has been under way - sparking a fire and provoking the Palestinian leader to accuse the Israeli government of a launching an attack.
"This is a big crime against this holy place, this nativity church," he said.
Israel withdrew most of its troops and armour from Mr Arafat's compound within hours of the Palestinians handing over six high-profile prisoners to Anglo-American custody in a US-brokered move to end the siege.
The Palestinian leader's supporters kissed and hugged each other, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and promising to defend their leader to the death.
Experts and advisors are nowadays working behind closed doors in both Jerusalem and Washington. One of the hot topics is how to design a Palestinian state that is weak in order to help Israel’s expansionist policies.
In addition, the plan must be acceptable to Israel and also serve US interests and goals in the region.
A year ago I wrote an article when Sharon the Butcher became Israel’s prime minister. In that article I said that the US was more keen than ever to see an independent Palestinian state. My predictions were based on US endeavors during the Balkan conflict and the resolutions imposed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbs, with absolute support from the Europeans and complete silence from the US, ensured the blocking of any efforts to establish an independent Muslim government on the pretext that it would represent a future danger to Europe. The Serbs, in order to achieve their goal, committed genocide and atrocities, threw bodies into mass graves, demolished mosques and Muslim buildings in an endeavor to abolish any sign of an Islamic heritage. They also committed rapes, destruction of property and farms and displacement of native people in a bid to expel them to other regions. The Europeans kept shamelessly silent and the UK protected the Serb’s plan until they finished their dirty war against defenseless Muslims.
On the shambles that is the Bush foreign policy
If the administration's foreign-policy apparat (minus the increasingly isolated Colin Powell) were placed under one roof -- Rice, Rumsfeld, and Reich; Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bush -- what watchword would be inscribed over the door? No, not "Abandon all hope, ye who enter." There are any number of supplicants who should not abandon hope -- Latin American putschsters, China's Leninist social Darwinists, the Colombian paramilitary, Ariel Sharon, even al-Qaeda terrorists scrambling over mountaintops with no U.S soldiers around to impede them. If not Dante, then, the inscription could be provided by another immortal. Casey Stengel, whose term in purgatory managing the '62 Mets prompted the deathless line that fits the Bush gang to a tee, said, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Apparently not. In record time, the Bush administration's foreign policy has become a cosmic shambles -- its interventions increasingly ineffectual and counterproductive; its refusals to intervene only making bad situations worse; its unilateralism undone by the impossibility, even for the world's superpower, of going it alone; its Manichaeism unsustainable in the face of complex, not to mention simple, realities; and its president's pronouncements good for the life span of a gnat.
Dr. 'Adel Sadeq, chairman of the Arab Psychiatrists Association and head of the Department of Psychiatry at 'Ein Shams University in Cairo, recently published an article titled "Class Isn't Over Yet, Stupid!" in the Egyptian newspaper Hadith Al-Madina,(1) which took the form of an open letter to President Bush. Dr. Sadeq, a recipient of the 1990 Egyptian State Prize, is an enthusiastic supporter of Palestinian suicide attacks. In an interview with Iqraa, a Saudi-Egyptian satellite television channel, he glorified martyrdom (suicide) operations. The following are excerpts from Sadeq's article and his interview with Iqraa:
The 'Hadith Al-Madina' Article
"Although you [President Bush] invest a lot of effort in proving yourself, you are not successful in doing so because you are stupid and understand nothing about what is happening in the world. 'Stupidity' and 'idiocy' are synonyms, and if you don't like the word 'stupid,' you are an evil person with an ugly soul."
"I equate your stupidity with mercilessness and inhumanity, and swear that I knew you were stupid long before it became known to the entire world, and before your cronies admitted it."
"Your stupidity is reflected in your facial features. Your face reminds me of the face of those who frequent a clinic for the mentally retarded. Your gaze is mindless and unfocused. Your eyes are misleading. Your facial expressions are incompatible with the matter [being discussed], and your tone of voice is completely disconnected from the content of your words ? a salient characteristic of the mentally retarded."
GAZA CITY: On Wednesday morning, Israeli forces led an assault in Gaza, killing 5 Palestinians, including a 2 year old girl. Israel alleges that the assault was in response to clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.
The young girl was killed in her home when the house was attacked by Israeli tank shelling.
Corporate America and corporate boardrooms across the globe wield enormous political influence. It may in fact be argued that in today's material world corporate interests are the primary motivating factors for political action.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that power, for a multitude of reasons, has been unjustly mobilized to help sustain 35 years of an illegal Israeli military and economic domination of the Palestinian people.
In light of this and the deteriorating situation in the Middle East the time has come for corporate boardrooms of companies involved in that region to reassess their role, even if that role has been to remain silent for all these years. The corporate world must channel its influence to end the Israeli occupation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a dangerous point that has the potential to disrupt business activity, especially U.S. business interests throughout the Middle East. Long-term U.S. national strategic interests in the region are also at risk, namely the cost and uninterrupted flow of oil. Millions of U.S. corporate and citizen tax dollars spent on building the Palestinian economy were lost in this latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian civil and national infrastructure. It would be negligent for corporate America to remain silent while its government recommits yet more tax dollars to the region without addressing the source of the conflict. Ending Israeli occupation is the only solution that will put the region back on track.
First the Arab states should allocate a hundred billion dollars to us, and only then will we be able to start talking about going to war against Israel. These were the terms set by Egypt's Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, when he was asked last week about the possibility of Egypt declaring war on Israel.
Ebeid shrewdly grasps the way his political colleagues feel; in particular, he understands the point of view of his boss, President Hosni Mubarak. War, Mubarak has noted, happens to cost a lot of money. So, first of all, the people have to be asked about it, since it is the country's young men who would be sent to the battlefield, and citizens of the state would suffer from a drastic decline in the level of public services. The Arab states haven't even been able to come up with a billion dollars to help the Palestinians; so a hundred billion is out of the question.
This thinking pretty much summarizes the Egyptian position on war.
Last Tuesday night, three 14-year-old Palestinian schoolboys from the Gaza strip armed themselves with knives and crude homemade explosives and headed towards the Israeli settlement of Nezarim.
Their aim was to break through the heavily guarded security fencing of the settlement, but they did not even get close.
The confrontation between the United Nations and Israel over a proposed UN fact-finding team to investigate what happened in the Jenin refugee camp appears to have reached a head.
The UN has tried to reassure the Israelis over the investigation
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has said that he thinks the team should be disbanded because of Israel's failure to co-operate with it.
His announcement shows that UN patience with Israeli objections over the proposed Jenin investigation appears to have run out.
Over a week of wrangling and delays, the UN has already met a number of Israel's demands - including the addition of a counterterrorism expert to the team and an offer to show Israel the findings of any report before the Security Council even sees it.
ARIEL SHARON, the Israeli Prime Minister, faces a deep split with Mossad, the country’s famed intelligence agency, over his strategy to defeat the Palestinian uprising.
According to Israeli officials and intelligence sources, the split could result in the departure of Ephraim Halevy, the highly respected spy chief, who has on several occasions openly challenged the Israeli leader.
The British-born Mossad director has been named as a possible Ambassador to Washington, a post which became vacant earlier this month. Although he has told colleagues that he is not interested in the appointment, he is coming under pressure to take it and open the way for a new intelligence chief from within Mr Sharon’s circle of confidants.
“Some people (in Government) are mentioning his name in connection to the post in Washington, because they want him out of Mossad,” an Israeli official said. “It has become very political.”
Israel Defense Forces sources have admitted that Palestinian claims of the systematic destruction of property, particularly computers, during the recent military operations in Ramallah are, for the most part, true. "There were indeed wide-scale, ugly phenomena of vandalism," a senior military sources told Ha'aretz yesterday.
And while another military source said that the army had yet to undertake a full investigation into the matter, there are already many individual cases that are being prosecuted through the military justice system.
Within the context of Operation Defensive Shield, an intelligence unit specialized in systematically going through public institutions of the Palestinian Authority and collecting hard disks from computers in offices, for the purposes of examining them based on the assumption that some would contain information on terrorist activity.
JERUSALEM, April 30 (AFP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's reluctant acceptance of a US plan to lift the siege of Yasser Arafat showed just how far Israel can push things with Washington, which previously gave it carte blanche.
"Every Israeli prime minister holds a bit of rope that is held on the other end by the president of the United States. The rope is long. It can be pulled and it can be released," said Nahum Barnea in Israel's Yediot Aharonot daily.
"The great mystery is at what point the game is over and the time has come to bow your head and submit," he wrote.
For Sharon, that point appears to have been reached last weekend when President George W. Bush telephoned him with a compromise to lift the siege of the West Bank headquarters of Arafat, where the Palestinian leader has been pinned down since December.
The Bush administration is moving to block a bill that recommends sanctioning Syria for its continued support of terrorism and other bad behavior. It is the administration’s latest attempt in a series of efforts to block legislation being pushed by pro-Israel lobbyists.
Last Thursday, congressmen Eliot Engel (D-New York) and Dick Armey (R-Texas) introduced the bill. A similar version was introduced in the Senate.
Subsequently, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Paul Kelly drafted a letter to Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) expressing the administration’s opposition to the bill. Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had sought the department’s opinion. As of Tuesday night, he had not received a copy of Kelly's letter.
THE United Nations was last night preparing to disband the team investigating Palestinian claims of a massacre during the Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp after Israel refused to let it start work.
The Israeli security cabinet had earlier decided that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, had not met its demands for amending the mission's mandate, "so there is no possibility of beginning the inquiry".
In New York Mr Annan denied the Israeli government's charges. "We've really done everything to meet them, to deal with their concerns. I think we've been very forthcoming," he said.
Rene Aquarone, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that looks after Palestinian refugee camps, blamed Israeli security measures such as road blocks that restrict access to and limit movement within Palestinian areas.
"This is a crisis on top of an emergency," Aquarone said.
Aquarone said the agency was having to rely on its international staff to drive aid convoys because its Palestinian staff was barred from entering Israel.
A physicist has been sentenced to 40 months in federal prison and fined $20,000 for illegally exporting to Israel tiny electronic components that could be used as triggers for nuclear weapons.
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Despite the havoc wrought by Palestinian suicide bombers, it is Israel that has proven to be the incontestable historical master of controlled and directed fury; from the callous, calculating terrorism of its pre-state underground to the most recent thorough and systematic lynching of the Palestinian Authority - security agencies and civilian infrastructure alike. Against this background, recent events take on a certain cyclical consistency: Israeli oppression met by Palestinian acts of resistance - sometimes bold, often bloody - met in turn by Israeli force, always excessive, invariably disproportionate and purposely designed to inflict maximum pain.
While the world's attention is caught by the agreement which seems to bring an end to the prolonged siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters, the city of Hebron with its 200,000 inhabitants, which had been spared invasion in the earlier stages of Sharon's war, is now enduring what the other West Bank cities had gone through weeks ago: dozens of tanks churning the asphalt of its streets and crushing private cars; inhabitants imprisoned in their homes by a tight curfew; soldiers invading houses and turning some of them into firing positions, with families crowded into a single room of their home; confrontations and shooting on the streets (10 Hebronites are reported dead, so far). On the TV screens we again witness the sickening sight of dozend of blindfolded and hancuffed Palestinians being led into detention.
I heard the shooting from the balcony of my apartment. Ismail, Yusuf, and Anwar tried to infiltrate the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night. They may have carried knives with them. That's what Abdul Aziz Rantissi said, a leader of Hamas in Gaza. They weren't suicide bombers as the New York Times claimed; they were kids in the 9th grade doing something they hadn't carefully thought through.
It was stupid and it was a total waste of their young lives, which is why Hamas issued a statement calling on children not to act as martyrs for Palestine until they were ready; until they were old enough. There were three funerals in Gaza Thursday morning, April 24th, and the fathers of each of the boys spoke about their sons to my friend Robert and me. The fathers didn't even know the three boys were friends and each of the funerals took place separately in different parts of the city, the families unknown to each other; the grief equally palpable in each location.
SAUDI ARABIA's Crown Prince Abdullah seemed to have only one message for President Bush at their meeting in Crawford, Tex., Thursday: that America's failure to restrain Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatens to send the region and U.S. interests in it "over a cliff," as the prince's spokesman put it. There is some truth in that. Though Mr. Bush has repeatedly called on Israel to end its military incursion into the West Bank -- and did so again both Thursday and Friday -- his messages to Israel have conveyed an ambivalence that Mr. Sharon has ruthlessly exploited.
Israel's chance of receiving an additional $200 million American aid package in the coming financial year has diminished because of fears that additional aid to Israel at this time would be seen as a further pro-Israel bias, sources in Washington say.
The State Department had originally asked Congress for additional aid - on top of the $2.8 billion in military and economic aid that Israel gets every year - but this was axed because the White House asked all government offices to cut additional aid requests because for fear of a budget deficit.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel decided Tuesday not to cooperate with a U.N. inquiry into the fighting at the Jenin refugee camp for now, defying a call by Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) to allow his fact-finding team to begin working immediately.
(CBS) When gasoline shot past $2 a gallon last June, oil companies blamed the price spike on a heavy summer driving season and depleted inventories, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr. But a Senate investigation puts the blame squarely on the oil companies themselves.
In a scathing report released by a Senate subcommittee, Big Oil is accused of manipulating the market to drive up profits. "In a number of instances," the report concludes, "refiners have sought to increase prices by reducing supply."
That conclusion will be the topic of hearings that begin Tuesday, with oil industry executives set to answer questions from the Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee.
Ramallah, 30 April 2002) ---- Almost 3am, and there is no point in trying to ignore the sounds and to try sleeping anymore. It is just too loud, too near. The heavy machine gunfire, the thuds of tank shelling. A few silences in between. Silences that hang in the air, expectant.
When the Israeli shelling of Ramallah started to be part of the 'normal' nightly sounds, we quickly learned about the differences in the noises. Two thuds, and it is relatively far. Loud, but nothing will hit our house. One loud thud and it is pretty near. I don't know how near. But it is near now.....
I think that a few hours ago I might have heard some of the Palestinian fire mixed in --the random and almost hollow clak, clak, clak!---- I don't hear any Palestinian fire anymore. Not for the past few hours.
Before one engages the question of what Palestinians have gained and lost over the last 18 months of confrontation, it is important to note two things. First, it makes more sense to ask that question to the party responsible for the transformation of relations. Israel, by creating a political vacuum in which Palestinians were asked to take-or-leave the Camp David proposals, stirring up hostility by sending right-wing extremist leader Ariel Sharon to visit Jerusalem's holiest Muslim shrine and then killing non-violent Palestinian demonstrators at a rate of ten a day in the start of the Intifada, bears the bulk of the responsibility for the situation we are in right now. As such, it would be interesting to know what Israel believes it has gained, other than bloodshed on both sides.
At least nine Palestinians were killed and 30 wounded during yesterday's incursion by the Israel Defense Forces into Hebron. No casualties were reported on the Israeli side. IDF sources said the operation, aimed at rounding up wanted suspects in terrorist incidents, should be over within a few days.
THE Israeli army has begun a pull out from the north of Hebron, the West Bank's most populous city which it seized yesterday, the commander of the operation said.
Palestinians have charged that during their eight-day occupation of the camp, Israeli forces:
Indiscriminately fired on civilians, killing hundreds of people
Used armoured bulldozers to flatten houses without verifying whether there was anyone inside
Carried out between 60 and 70 summary executions
Used Palestinian civilians as human shields during house-to house searches.
Prevented medics from treating the wounded
Israel today said it would not cooperate with a UN inquiry into its offensive at the Jenin refugee camp, defying the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.
Israel's security cabinet said in a statement that Israel had raised several issues with UN officials that it considered vital for holding a fair inquiry.
The statement said: "As long as these conditions have not been met, there is no possibility of beginning the inquiry."
The Palestinians claim the West Bank camp was the scene of a massacre earlier this month, with the killing of more than 250 Palestinians, including civilians.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Every day, I receive anguished letters, e-mails and phone calls from members of my congregation and others who have been tagged with the label "self-hating Jews." Why? Solely because they've raised questions about Israel's policy toward Palestinians.
There is something deeply hurtful about that term and about the way the Jewish community is treating its dissenters, something reminiscent of the cultural repressiveness of 1950s McCarthyism and its labeling of dissidents as "anti-American."
Monday, April 29, 2002
(Jenin, 27 April 2002) --The reality left behind by the Israelis in Jenin Refuge Camp defies even the most vicious imagination. One after another, the people of Jenin have been trying to tell anyone in the world who will listen what they have witnessed and lived through since the beginning of their most recent tragedy on April 3, 2002. Even though the Israeli checkpoints have been turning back aid workers, human rights monitors and journalists, some have made it through and as April ends, the horror of Jenin is left painfully visible for all who dare to look.
I went as a journalist, and it was as a journalist that I must say that some of the most disparaging things I saw were the actions of representatives of the English-speaking and other Western media. Not because the wreckage that had been the homes and livelihoods of thousands of people, or the stories of death, destruction and dehumanization, were not as awful as the most paranoid among us would imagine, but precisely because they were. Yet, to most of the journalists I encountered during my three days in Jenin, the people of Jenin and what remained of their world were secondary to the “real story.” It would seem that the journalists who made it into Jenin had already writen their stories in advance with the assistance of the Israeli government while they were kept from setting foot in the camp; it was as if their only reason for going to the camp was to obtain visuals and carefully contrived soundbytes.
I watched as an English-speaking French journalist spent 15 minutes manipulating a 10-year-old boy into saying, “I want to be a fighter. I will kill Jews with my kalishnikov.” It was quite a labor for him to get the child to enunciate “kalishnikov” clearly enough to suit his eager cameraman. I saw an American photojournalist pressure a clean-up crew with one of the rare and much-needed bulldozers working to find bodies in one house to stop their work there and move to another area in order to get a “better shot.”
More than anything, I saw journalist after journalist ask person after person who came to them with their story, “Are you a fighter?” When the answer was, “No, I’m just a regular person,” the journalist moved on.
Aid workers in Jenin have welcomed an offer by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to help rebuild the devastated West Bank refugee camp.
The UAE says it will rebuild 800 homes destroyed in recent fighting between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces.
The UAE says it has also sent a plane carrying 40 tonnes of food and medical supplies for the Palestinians.
"It is a unique contribution, with no other union of states giving such a blanket commitment to a major chunk of repairing the damage that's done," said United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) commissioner-general Peter Hansen.
Mr Hansen said the aid amounted to about $35m.
Israeli forces invaded the West Bank town of Hebron this morning, reportedly killing nine Palestinians, while in Bethlehem a Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity was shot dead by Israeli snipers.
The incursion into Hebron came just hours after Israel's cabinet reluctantly agreed to US proposals to release the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, from his month-long confinement at his West Bank headquarters.
Israel said Mr Arafat was free to leave his compound in Ramallah now, but his aides suggested he would not do so until six Palestinians wanted by Israel had been moved from his headquarters to a prison in the nearby town of Jericho within the next two days.
WASHINGTON –– President Bush's stepped-up pressure on Israel to halt its military offensive in the West Bank may not calm growing Arab anger. Already, there are signs the hostility is leading to possible danger for Americans, and less cooperation in the war against terrorism.
After a two-week lull, guerrillas again are attacking Israel from another front, Lebanon. In Egypt, long allied with the United States, young people have tried to sneak into Israel to join the fight and there are worries they could turn their wrath on Americans as easily as Israelis.
U.S. officials say privately that Yemen is stalling plans to deploy U.S. military counterterror trainers because of the situation in the Mideast. In addition, Arab nations' cooperation in any potential U.S. plan to attack Iraqi President Saddam Hussein seems stalled.
JERUSALEM -- To generations of Israeli fans, Yaffa Yarkoni has been "the Singer of the Wars." Whenever troops marched into battle, they could be sure Yarkoni would follow. Clad in fatigues, she raised spirits at the front with her rousing renditions of patriotic songs.
So it seemed natural for Army Radio to interview the iconic singer in her home a few days before Israel's Independence Day this month. Once again, Israeli troops were at war, this time in the West Bank, where they were sweeping through Palestinian towns and refugee camps in Israel's largest military operation there since the 1967 Middle East War.
But this time, Yarkoni offered no words of encouragement. Instead, she bitterly criticized the troops, the government and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an anguished tirade that shocked her interviewer and enraged many Israelis. "When I saw the Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, young men, I said, 'It is like what they did to us in the Holocaust,' " Yarkoni said. "We are a people who have been through the Holocaust. How are we capable of doing these things?"
NEVE SHALOM/WAHAT AL-SALAM, Israel - A broad grin crossed Lior Shalem's boyish face as he drove up the long, winding road leading into this picturesque village and made a turn toward the plot of land where his house will be built.
Here, he and his wife will have Jewish and Arab neighbors. They will hear Arabic on the street as much as Hebrew. And his 14-month-old daughter will go to school with Jewish and Arab children.
Suzanne Goldenberg reveals the extent of abuses against civilians in Israel's four-week military offensive