The latest news from Israel: the Shas party is bargaining with rightwinger-but-currently-centrist Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz to stave off new elections - if the new prime minister can't form a government.....

New Prime Minister?! Oy vey...

Mofaz parlays with Shas to avoid early elections - Haaretz - Israel News

By Mazal Mualem

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz has been forging closer links with Shas to head off early elections and lay the groundwork for an alternative government headed by him in the current Knesset.

Mofaz has held several discussions with the Shas chairman - Industry Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai - and Communications Minister Ariel Atias. The two reportedly told him that they would support him if he promised to increase child allowances. Shas sources said party leaders have already reached agreements with Mofaz on this issue.

Mofaz believes he can prevent early elections and is acting to secure Shas' support before the Kadima leadership primary. This would give him a huge advantage over his main rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading in the public opinion polls.

Mofaz believes that Kadima's Knesset faction and the party's central activists and mayors, who fear falling from power if new elections are held, would support him.

Mofaz sees himself as "naturally connected" to Shas due to his religious and right-wing background. In private conversations he has said he can also bring Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu back into the coalition.

He has said the last thing Labor chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak wants is early elections.

Mofaz will launch a campaign against a pullout from the Golan Heights today, to strengthen his support among right-wing voters in general. He intends to tour the Golan and meet residents there.

Yep, this pretty much sucks.

It turns out that Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel took big ol' envelopes of cash from some skeezy American guy back in his headier days. Not a big surprise, but the problem is that the wobbly Israeli government is apparently about to crumble.

The choice thing about Israel's annoying government system is that the cabinet ministers are all from different parties, so you have a cross-partisan seige mentality at every cabinet meeting. In theory this could stabilize a diverse country, but in reality it has perpetually gridlocked every political development in Israel.

Every span of time required to actually execute a tough political maneuver and achieve better peace with the Arabs gets interrupted by some stupid, destabilizing party squabble, which amplifies and multiplies, ricocheting across the region. Plus, the parties (especially Shas) are notorious for treating "their" ministries as absurd, corrupt rackets.

Every time something is actually going in the right direction for Israel (the calmer periods such as the 1990s and after the peace treaty with Egypt), the internal tensions among Israeli political parties flare up. Generally this causes the Israeli government to back away from the Arabs generally, and swat around more, all in a futile effort to keep all the party hacks at the Israeli cabinet table happy.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration policy has simply let all these fault lines fester out of control.

Perhaps Olmert will be able to stick it out, but unfortunately kind of crisis is all too easily expected -- Olmert never had a sterling reputation in terms of corruption.

A few days ago from good ol' Haaretz:

Barak, too, comes in for harsh criticism - Haaretz - Israel News

By Shahar Ilan

Politicians from across the spectrum were quick to criticize Defense Minister Ehud Barak's speech yesterday, in which he called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to leave his post.

Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said an "elections dynamic" is starting to develop in the Knesset, and "I do not see a chance to establish a new government from within the Knesset." According to Yishai, Shas is the only party which does not need to fear elections.

The head of the Likud faction, MK Gideon Saar, said "Barak's news conference was a copy of [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni's unimpressive news conference after the Winograd [Committee report]. It is impossible to reconcile the understanding that Olmert is not fit to be prime minister, and between [Barak's] remaining in the cabinet," said Saar.

The Meretz faction called Barka's words "lip service written on ice without any schedule or ultimatum with them."

MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) disputed that view, saying "Barak has moved in the right direction, but too little and too slowly, and without a schedule."

On the other side, MK Effie Eitam (National Union-National Religious Party) said that he very much hopes "that Barak understands that the public will not put up with another round of zigzags and doublespeak from him."

Likud filed a no-confidence motion yesterday, saying it is clear the government has reached its end, and called on the coalition partners to stop with political maneuvering and agree to a date for early elections.

The National Union-National Religious Party filed its own no-confidence motion based on Tuesday's testimony by Morris Talansky.

The head of the National Religious Party, Zevulun Orlev, accused Barak of making empty promises. "Instead of making a decisive political act that would bring about the end of Olmert's tenure and move up the elections, Barak has chosen to make an amorphous statement without any schedule."

Barak did have some support from within his own party, as MK Collette Avital (Labor) described his words as "sharp and clear." Avital said it was up to Kadima to choose its path as soon as possible.

Two Kadima MKs, Amira Dotan and Zeev Elkin, joined the calls for Olmert's resignation. Dotan wrote Olmert a letter saying there is crisis of faith in him, and he should find a way to allow Kadima to choose new leadership.

Note from HongPong: I have talked with Lukery and he told me a while ago that I could repost material from his various nifty and methodical blogs about the Sibel Edmonds case, which remains stuck mostly in a dormant state. Sibel just announced she was willing to get slammed for the gag order if a national network will air her case. Tellingly, no one wants to bother so far. All of this was posted on Lukery's blog Let Sibel Edmonds Speak a while ago.
Source: http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2007/11/sibel-edmonds-case-unte...
Nice work Lukery. Also be sure to check out the ever-solid BradBlog.com for GOP voting machine hacking and other whistle-blower stuff.

Please look at my special basic collection of stuff about the case too.Though indeed that area of this site could be much better.
*******

Last week, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, announced that she was willing to tell everything that she knows if any of the major networks are willing to give her airtime, without airbrushing the essence of her case. Bradblog will have an update on the progress, or lack of it, next week.

Of course, Sibel would prefer to testify under oath in congress, but apparently our Democratic Congresscritters (I'm looking at you, Waxman) don't care about the treason, bribery, and corruption that has hijacked US foreign policy.

Meanwhile, last week we learnt that the judge in the AIPAC case has allowed subpoenas to be issued to 15 current and former high-level officials. Many of us are excited about the prospect of the trial - but Sibel assures us that the case, as it stands, is just the tip of the iceberg.

'AIPAC' is at the core of Sibel's case, and Sibel’s story needs to be heard - either in Congress, or in the media.

****

Those of you who have been following Sibel's case will be familiar with the American Turkish Council (ATC) - the 'mini-AIPAC' that (ostensibly) exists to promote Turkey's military interests in the US.

As it happens, the ATC is a creation of AIPAC (and other Israeli lobbying interests) - and there is significant overlap in the membership, goals and activities of both AIPAC and the ATC. This is perhaps not surprising given the long-standing tri-lateral military (and military 'defense' spending) relationship between the three countries. In fact, Sibel refers to AIPAC and the ATC as 'sister organizations.'

Not only were the ATC and AIPAC 'sister organizations,' they also had something else in common: there have been 'sister investigations' into both organizations. And of course, both investigations uncovered serious criminality at the highest levels of the US administration - Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Sibel described the overlap in this interview with Antiwar's Chris Deliso in 2005:

SE: Look, I think that that [the AIPAC investigation] ultimately involves more than just Israelis – I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If (Patrick) Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel.

CD: A monster, 600-pound catfish, huh? So the Turkish and Israeli investigations had some overlap?

SE: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

CD: But you can start from anywhere –

SE: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

In 2004, Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathon Landay confirmed that the 'AIPAC case' was much more serious than anything that has seen the light of day so far:

"Several U.S. officials and law-enforcement sources said yesterday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the Franklin matter.

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.

They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry."

Keep in mind that the FBI operation against AIPAC et al goes back to at least 1999 - so they were watching all of the relevant characters throughout this period. In fact, you'll note that Strobel refers to "the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities" - apparently the Pentagon, particularly Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, was itself the 'target' of the investigation.

Investigations shut down.
What happened to that Pentagon investigation? Why aren't Doug Feith, Richard Perle and others in prison? I can only presume that this particular investigation was shut down, just like so many other investigations into these criminals.

In a recent interview Sibel described some cases that were shut down. The case referred to in this excerpt is apparently an Israeli counter-intelligence case:

"There are other cases we are not hearing about that I'm aware of that have to do with similar cases, maybe having to do with other countries. For example, again this is another relevant case, an outside case, the Larry Franklin case, with the espionage case that they pursued with AIPAC. And what the American public doesn’t know is the fact that there were other counter-intelligence operations within the FBI that obtained far more information not only limited to Mr. Franklin, that were similarly shut down in 2000 and 2001 because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too many people, US persons. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason."

And here Sibel describes the same thing taking place within Turkish counter-intelligence:

Now the same thing was about to take place with Turkish counter-intelligence. In the main portion of the documented — wiretapped or paper — operations that I translated verbatim (not only for the Washington Field Office but also for the Chicago and New Jersey offices), they were obtained before 2001. If we were to put a date on it you’re looking at end of 1996 to 2001. Now, in 1998 and 1999, there were so many pieces of evidence of U.S. individuals’ involvement. We’re talking about people with official positions, whether they were in the State Department or the Pentagon or the U.S. Congress that forced the Justice Dept, and the good agents who did the right thing, they started a parallel investigation that targeted these individuals who were possibly committing acts of treason.

However, as I was told by first-source agents I was working with, this was put on hold in 1999 because President Clinton was then going through the Lewinsky scandal. After the current administration came into power and after I was working there, the agents were told to shut down.

Similar allegations
Sibel isn't the only person who claims that investigations like this have been shut down. For example, in Kill The Messenger, ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi says:

All of these people (Richard Perle, Doug Feith) have been investigated by the FBI at one point or another for passing secret information to Israel. In no cases, were any of them convicted. The prosecutions were dropped… in my opinion because of political pressure not to get into this kind of case that involves Israel and espionage.

Similarly, Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported in Prospect:

"Since the Pollard case, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement sources have revealed to the Prospect that at least six sealed indictments have been issued against individuals for espionage on Israel's behalf. It's a testament to the unique relationship between the United States and Israel that those cases were never prosecuted; according to the same sources, both governments ultimately addressed them through diplomatic and intelligence channels rather than air the dirty laundry. A number of career Justice Department and intelligence officials who have worked on Israeli counterespionage told the Prospect of long-standing frustration among investigators and prosecutors who feel that cases that could have been made successfully against Israeli spies were never brought to trial, or that the investigations were shut down prematurely."

Sibel often makes the same point. The FBI agents in the field are doing a great job, however:

The people who made that decision (to shut down the investigation) were not the Justice Department or the FBI, and that’s what I try to emphasize all the time — they were pressured, they were forced by higher-up forces within the Pentagon and the State Department.

That is, the guilty parties at the Pentagon and State Dept have the power to stomp on investigations into their own illegal activities. And as Sibel says, these people were involved in criminal activity, not just simple state-based espionage.

As reported in Vanity Fair:

"In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder."

Once we understand that simple fact, this report from Washington Post makes more sense:

"Reports on the investigation have baffled foreign policy analysts and U.S. officials because the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already cooperate on intelligence matters and share policy views. Despite some rocky moments, the relationship has been among the United States' closest in both policy and intelligence sharing since Israel was founded almost six decades ago."

Current AIPAC case
As I've demonstrated, the current 'AIPAC' case involving Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen receiving information from Larry Franklin barely scratches the surface of the underlying crimes that these investigations have yielded, and even this very limited case may never see the light of day. In an apparent greymail attempt, the defense has called 15 current and former government officials to testify - including Condi Rice, Douglas Feith, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams and Richard Armitage. In fact, in Judge Ellis' opinion last week, he gave the admistration this offer ultimatum:

"The government's refusal to comply with a subpoena in these circumstances may result in dismissal or a lesser sanction"

Surely the administration won't refuse that offer ultimatum.

There was, however, one interesting piece of news in the judge's ruling last week. In footnote 8, page 7, Judge Ellis wrote

"The government does not object to the issuance of subpoenas to Franklin, Satterfield, Pollack, or Makovsky."

JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reported, without elaboration, that:

"The government did not raise objections to the four subpoenas for officials who were identified in the indictment."

If this is correct, then one of the mysteries of the case has apparently (nearly) been solved. In the original indictment, the unindicted co-conspirators were addressed using codewords. We now know that Ken Pollack was USGO-1, David Satterfield was USGO-2 but we didn't know the identities of two others: "DoD employee A" and "DoD employee B."

"DoD employee A" played the trivial, and quite possibly innocent, role of telling Rosen that Larry Franklin was an expert on Iran. On the other hand, "DoD employee B" was a willing participant in at least one espionage-related meeting with Rosen, Weissman and Franklin.

Michael Makovsky, one of Larry Franklin's co-workers at the OSP is apparently either "DoD employee A" or "DoD employee B." If he is "DoD employee B," why hasn't he been indicted?

One Remaining Mystery
Given all this history, the one remaining mystery is how on earth this current 'AIPAC' trial has come as far as it has. Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported:

This history (of shutting down investigations) had led to informed speculation that the FBI -- fearing the Franklin probe was heading toward the same silent end -- leaked the story to CBS to keep it in the public eye and give it a fighting chance.

Three and a half years later, it appears that the fight is over. Larry Franklin has pled guilty, but even if the AIPAC case goes forward, most of the underlying crimes, and most of the criminal perpetrators, will go unpunished.

One Last Chance
Sibel has evidence of the underlying crimes. She knows who the criminals are. She wants to testify under oath in Congress but the spineless Democrats, particularly Henry Waxman, want her to keep quiet about these issues.

In an act of desperation, Sibel has bravely offered to tell all, at great personal (both legal and physical) risk, if one of the major networks will air her story. Given the history, Sibel's offer is the only chance we'll have to hear any of these remarkable allegations.

Waxman can be contacted in DC:(202)225-3976 and LA:323 651-1040. The toll free Capitol switchboard number is 800-828-0498. See if you can shame him into doing something.

The blog We Can Change The World has put together a list (with contact details) of journalists and media outlets that have (partially) covered Sibel's story in the past. If you contact those journalists, perhaps they'll be willing to at least write about Sibel's offer - which might put pressure on either Waxman or one of the networks to actually take up the offer.

******

cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

(Email me if you want to be added to my Sibel email list. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

People are asking me if the war in Iran is going to start on the 15th of October. Well, I answer, in the 4th generation warfare sense, it already has started..... Seymour Hersh's latest missive must be read. Now it's 'counterterrorism' with the Republican Guard. Joe Lieberman practically tried to start the war last week. Fuckin A. The new war messaging. The whole bit... Goddamn... Goddamn...

Daily dimension of Minnesota conspiratoria: Jesse Ventura questions 9/11 and compares it to the JFK assassination:

Fourth dimension of power: your partisan bickering, removed: This Modern World. Obvious statements: Boondocks is teh awesome. Doonesbury too.

OpenCircuit, a new Twin Cities tech collective concept. Related: MinneDemo: DemoCamp Minnesota.

Yong Ho from the Macalester days has a sweet trilingual website.

AIR is a new Adobe app platform (Like Java). You can do your GoogleAnalytics through it. Didn't seem to have much advantage over the web way though.

OpenDNS is a nifty new DNS management service. Get rid of those "looking up website....." delays by getting better DNS! Bonus for businesses and fundies: it can filter porn too!

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. This is a great long summary, the major sectors of the book distilled so you can better understand the IMF/Pinochet/supercapitalist doom mode, seen everywhere from Katrina to Iraq. And how are people are building "shock absorbers" into their local societies in order to thrive once more. A powerful argument against the dying 'Washington consensus' of exploitative trade and debt slavery economics. Much more useful as an analytic frame than most things these days.

Alternatives to the conventional 'crazy talk': Icarus, community alternatives for mental illness.

Cool stuff: Free Speech TV and Keynote: Jeremy Scahill on his new "Blackwater" book, and something called Conspiracy Theory Rock.

Wall Street Journal fantasyland, convinced $100 barrels of oil wouldn't kill the economy. Dangerous groupthink from on high, and Mr. Murdoch's property working nicely: How Economy Could Survive $100 Oil.

Good for secrets and such: cryptogon.com.

Retired CIA analysts spell out the mideast gig: The Teflon Alliance with Israel. (Counterpunch rules)

A selection of interesting stuff from the Agonist, one of my favorite sites:

The Hope In Weakness (Morality II) | The Agonist

The Land of Cotton: Uzbekist@n, Not Dixie and East Germany on the Amu Darya: Ubzekist@n.

Blackwater Woes: More Elite than Our Military? and Blackwater, The Privatization of War And Public Enemy Number One.

Old Folks In the US Unhealthier Than Europeans. A LOT Unhealthier.

Morality | The Agonist

Air War: Target Iran! | The Agonist

That's all for now kiddos. Go read Hersh if you didn't already.

It's a grim truism that the Bush White House doesn't care too much about the problems of Palestinians. And, um, well, basically chief nasty enforcer Elliot "Honduran Death Squad Organizer" Abrams dominates American policy, continuously ordering Condi Rice to put a sock in it. Abrams, an Iran-Contra veteran and convicted (but pardoned) felon, is master of the White House Mideast portfolio today.

Here's the basic idea: First, the White House assumes Arabs are a bunch of fucking morons who ought to be set against each other with violence. (See similar racist material among MS Word documents from the old Coalition Provisional Authority. More on that later.) Abrams is now trying to pour cash through Fatah figurehead Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who then would disperse patronage in an effort to build his own political base. Then the U.S. and Israel provide a mountain of weapons to Fatah gunmen, who will blow Hamas away in a tidy little move.

The problem is that this plan is like most Mideast efforts nowadays: it's a malign effort to kick the can a few yards down the field and avoid putting Israel on the spot for negotiations. It's been the same song-and-dance since at least 1982, when Sharon invaded Lebanon to prevent negotiations with the PLO.

Here is the sinister Abrams plan via Asia Times. Yet again another dumb policy designed to enhance the military-industrial complex that strangles Israel, while facilitating more West Bank settlement construction. Just another day in the Mideast. Here's part one, wherein we learn how the Jordanians have censored this news. Ian Welsh over at the Agonist calls it "the essential insanity." Correct sir! Here's more on the Elliot Abrams plan of doom. Tony Karon aptly notes that Gazan Fatah chieftain Mohammad Dahlan is probably getting into fighting HAMAS because of foreign encouragement. This guy is gearing up to become the U.S./Israeli cats-paw or instrument of power, gendarme, whatever you want to call it.

Matt Yglesias bitterly observed the open anti-Palestinian racism of New Republic editor Martin Peretz. (Those guys are supposed to be liberal!) And then 2 3 4 he goes on and on without noting this whole thing was a consequence of American policy. Ygs:

Gone missing from this analysis is any recognition of the extent to which the current terrible situation is the result of stupid American policy choices. The dynamic on the US-Israeli side has become one of self-fulfilling prophesies, where the failure of ham-handed policy initiatives to produce the desired Palestinian quisling regime becomes the reason for more ham-handed initiatives whose failure then becomes yet another reason there can be no serious push for peace.

There's no end-game. Just wasting more time and blood.

"Hey now... I mean seriously WTF?" this photo seems to say...



A suppressed slice of news from the Mideast: a top member of Jordanian royalty discerns a plan to break up the Middle East into an array of new states with Israel up top. Here's a slice from Kurt Nimmo's Another Day in the Empire blog: Prince Hassan: Neocons and Israel Plan “New 100 Years of War” in the Middle East:

[Despite American media suppression] what does Bin Talal and millions of Arabs know?

“After a keynote speech at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on the ‘coexistence of civilizations’ Prince Hassan Bin Tallal, crown prince of Jordan in the final days of the late King Hussein, spoke to Today’s Zaman…. Prince Hassan made it clear that the idea of breaking Iraq into pieces, as is circulating in some US and Israeli circles, would be a fatal mistake. The Jordanian prince warned that a possible break-up would play into the hands of Israeli ‘extremists,’ making Israel the dominant minority in a region of minorities.”

Prince Hassan “is now one of the leading intellectuals and activists of the Islamic world,” and yet his comments go unreported in this country. “I want to cite the Clean Break paper of 1996 attributed to the conservatives in the US. It seems to me that the concept of pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, supra-national identity was actually taken to pieces by this paper, arguing somehow that fragmentation was taking place in that part of the world, so let us take full advantage of this. Muslims and Arabs do not need enemies as they are doing an excellent job of destroying each other. Of course this plays into the hands of Israeli extremists that believe Israel should emerge as the dominating minority in a region of minorities or a mosaic of minorities.”

The idea of taking “to pieces” Arab nationalism is hardly revelatory. “This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking,” writes Khalil Nakhleh in the publisher’s note to Israel Shahak’s transation of Oded Yinon’s A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. “Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme,” going back at least to the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former prime minister of Israel, as documented by Livia Rokach (Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary). Of course, until the Israelis hit the jackpot with the neocons, who were able to infiltrate the Bush administration and drive U.S. foreign policy, they were unable to carry out their master plan on the scale envisioned.

“End of the Westphalian system, the end of the Middle Eastern community of states, the beginning of a Balkanization that could lead, in the words of the former Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi, to a new 100 years of war,” Hassan continues.

In short, a plan perfect for the Israelis and their neocon helpers.

Of course, none of this matters—as we are essentially deaf, dumb, and blind here in America, a condition facilitated by the corporate media—and it appears quite plain we are headed for what Hassan characterizes as a “new 100 years of war,” not simply in the Middle East but across the board.

Who is Oded Yinon? One of those hardcore rightwing Zionists who wanted to see the chips fall where they may in the midst of chaos, leaving Israel as the ascendant regional hegemon. I'm not claiming this is the dominant strategic view in Israel, but it's still tempting as a perceived way for Israel to escape the grim wheels of fate. More sane Israeli analysts and strategists don't favor such madcap schemes, since the ensuing chaos would leave Israel far more vulnerable to nuclear attack, as nuclear proliferation would surely accelerate, probably leaving nukes in the hands of irrational actors.

So it's a chancy scheme. What kind of map are these guys after? Something kinda retrograde, like this:

More sweet maps here.

Check out The Zionist Plan for the Middle East by Oded Yinon, translated and edited by Israel Shahak, one of those old school kinds of theoretical schemes. Here is Shahak's introduction. Shahak is a leftist dissident Zionist and Israeli professor:

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon's article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the "vision" for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel's Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach's study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980's," talks about "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967" that are created by the "very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel."

Israeli Pro-marijuana party tells supporters: Pot smoking forbidden on Passover By The Associated Press

In bad news for its religious Jewish supporters, an Israeli pro-marijuana party announced Tuesday that smoking pot is forbidden on Passover. Cannabis is among the substances Jews are forbidden to consume during the week-long festival, which begins Monday, said Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the Green Leaf party.

Biblical laws prohibit eating leavened foods during Passover, replacing bread with flat crackers called matza. Later injunctions by European rabbis extended those rules to forbid other foods like beans and corn, and more recent rulings have further expanded the ban to include hemp seeds, which today are found in some health oils - and in marijuana.

Green Leaf is a small political party that supports the legalization of marijuana. Although it is by no means a Jewish religious authority, the group decided to warn its observant supporters away from the drug on Passover. "You shouldn't smoke marijuana on the holiday, and if you have it in your house you should get rid of it," Levine said.

But not everyone needs to give up their habit for the duration of the festival. The rabbinic injunctions banning hemp were never adopted by Sephardic Jews, who come from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. That means there is no reason they can't keep smoking marijuana, Levine said, except that it remains illegal, despite her party's best efforts.

Green Leaf contested the last three national elections but never won a seat, despite gaining popularity as a protest vote. According to Levine, the party has a large number of religious supporters.

Oddly, the story posted on Haaretz drops the conclusion that apparently, it's kosher the rest of the year. That's what I read in the New York Times bulletin.

A couple other items from Haaretz: the interview with Prof Ron Robin from NYU:

Dear Prof. Robin, How do you see the influence of AIPAC and the rest of the Israeli lobby on the American policy in the Middle East?

Thank you, Jeffrey Hellm

Response: AIPAC is, indeed, a powerful lobby. However recent (poorly researched and politically slanted) publications have transformed this organization into something quite sinister. Personally, I do not share the underlying philosophy of AIPAC, in particular its unreflective support of hard-line, right wing policies in Israel. But this organization is merely playing by the rules governing the American political system. Contrary to popular opinion, AIPAC is by no means the most powerful lobby in Washington; it is however, more visible than most other lobbies. Its strenuous lobbying - for a variety of questionable causes - is nothing out of the ordinary. They are just a bit more skillful than a few of their immediate rivals.

This opinion bit about settling the conflict made some sense. Meanwhile West Bank settlers park themselves into a Hebron military base, "temporarily" for 16 years.

The Central Command has told Peace Now that the base was captured in 1983 "for security needs and not for settlement needs.... Nonetheless," the army said, "in 1991 the Justice Ministry handed down an opinion determining that the military commander can allow Israeli inhabitants, including civilians, to enter the territory, for temporary residence, if and to the extent that it is in line with military needs there."

Start with The Checkpoint Generation by Amira Hass in Haaretz and Apartheid Looks Like This on Antiwar. Both links talk about Machsom Watch, a team of Israeli activists who monitor the abuses occurring at the hundreds of military checkpoints designed to choke Palestinian society. Interestingly, Machsom Watch volunteers have observed a calm, quiet IDF checkpoint all day, then return home to see TV news reporting that the Army caught suicide bombers at the checkpoint that very day! The volunteer says she quit believing the Army a long time ago – basically it fabricates news items about defeating Palestinians, in order to manipulate the Israeli voting public that has to pay for the military-industrial machine. (Puts Zarqawi's leveraged military-industrial-generated xenophobia to shame!)

The old dog of the Israeli peace movement, Uri Averny, with his always-disturbing take on internal Israeli moves - and destabilizations - towards war with Iran:

Antiwar: Pick an Enemy, Any Enemy: Bush and Olmert and the next war by Uri Avnery (2/28/07)

"We are ready for the next war," a reserve soldier in the Israel Defense Forces told a TV reporter this week, on the scene of a brigade-size maneuver on the Golan Heights.

What war? Against whom? About what? This was not stated, and not even asked. The soldier saw it as self-evident that war will break out soon, and it seems that he did not particularly care against whom.

Politicians are used to expressing themselves more cautiously, in words like "If, God forbid, a war should break out." But in Israeli public discourse, the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise. Of course war will break out. The only question is against whom.

Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike, maybe a bluff, grains of salt etc.

Now the other little war, the apparently subtle and inoffensive chomping of West Bank land. The big ol Red Line is the wall they built, and the green line is the Green Line - 1948-1967 border, wherein Arabs are Israeli citizens. Palestinians between red and green are NOT part of the Israeli political system, hence 'apartheid' is one of few useful terms to describe the situation. Although we aren't allowed to use it. How about: "Happy racially-based two-tier military administration regime?"

Palestinians and their farmland between the red and green lines are under a direct squeeze and attempted annexation. The blue polygons are settlements placed atop farmland annexed by fiat (point of the gun) in recent years.

West Bank town of Bilin fights the Israeli wall that split in half:

The Palestinians say the barrier, which dips into the West Bank in many areas to include Jewish settlements on the Israeli side, is an Israeli land grab that locks them up in enclaves, robbing them of a future state.

The barrier, designed to stretch 430 miles, is about two-thirds complete.

Bilin has become a symbol of the fight against it.

Palestinian and Israeli protesters, joined by foreign activists, first banded together two years ago to try to prevent a section of the barrier from being built on the hills of the village, which lies north of Jerusalem.

Some 575 acres — more than half of Bilin's land — were confiscated to build the wide barrier loop around the expanding Jewish settlement of Kiryat Sefer.

Despite often violent confrontations with police that routinely left protesters with injuries from tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets, the section of the barrier running along the village was completed.

Yet the protests have continued, with some activists trying to cut the fence with wire cutters in a symbolic act of destruction. During last year's Palestinian parliamentary elections, the weekly protest was a key whistle stop for candidates stumping for votes...

Map sources: the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department (well done, guys) and ForUsa.org's Interfaith Peacebuilders Program. We'll pilfer a photo/caption too:

This is the settlement of Mattiayahu East--being built on Bil'in village lands. Becuase of a court victory, the construction of this settlement has been frozen, for now.



Another great moment in worthless American foreign policy.

Elected HAMAS mayor Ramadan Shatat of Bidya in the West Bank heroically attempts to deliver municipal services with a smile, as a member of an armed militant organization in a territory under foreign military occupation and creative suburban colonization (see above). This is municipal politics on the edge, no matter which way you slice it. I don't see how anyone wouldn't be impressed:

No terrorist attacks have been launched from Bidya, which is just 20 miles from Tel Aviv, and Jews used to flock to town to buy inexpensive furniture. But after a new wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence erupted in 2000, Israeli roadblocks cut off Bidya not just from Tel Aviv, but often from Palestinian cities, too.

Thus, one of the mayor's main goals: Make Bidya's 10,000 residents as self-reliant as possible. Early on, he persuaded the Arab Bank to install the town's first ATM. It is used so much the bank will open a full-service branch in June. Four months ago, Jerusalem's Open University began offering classes in a makeshift campus on the top floors of City Hall. It already has 350 students.

Bidya also has a new TV station, which recorded the festivities as the chief justice, Tayseer al-Tamimi, was escorted into a flower-bedecked wedding hall by a drum and cymbal band. "The Palestinian people must be united!" Tamimi thundered to a large audience as the mayor nodded in agreement. "We have to focus our efforts on building our society, not on fighting."

The crowd then proceeded down the street where Tamimi cut the ribbon on the new court, which will serve 40,000 people in 20 villages. Afterward, the mayor got back to business, proudly noting that on this day Bidya was also sending out its first computerized utility bills.

'By our own hands': Since Shatat was first profiled by the St. Petersburg Times on the eve of the 2006 Palestinian elections, much has changed. Some Hamas mayors in other cities have struggled with soaring poverty and violence between Fatah and Hamas factions. But the 34-year-old Shatat - who has a master's degree and dresses like a CPA - has kept Bidya calm with his wonkish zeal for efficiency.

The cutoff in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority "was a wrong decision," he said, "because you are punishing all Palestinians." Bidya completed a new U.S.-funded park because the money was in the pipeline, but had to scrap plans for a cultural center with theater and library.

TalkingPointsMemo flags oncoming doom while Dead Blonde Chicks consume all the TV media oxygen as they mortify. That's sort of Babylonian...

Who needs a surge when you have the sleaziest, most destructive liar of the century holding the crucial government function of mediating between ALL the Baghdad residents and the upcoming Escalation?

Ahmed Chalabi is NOW supposed to placate the wasted sectors of Baghdad. This from the guy who touched off all the looting, personally kicked all the Sunnis out of the government, sparking the core Sunni insurgency. And helped spoof all the fake war intelligence.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?! BRAVO, ROBERT GATES, ANOTHER SHREWD MOVE FROM THE PENTAGON! I'm glad we gave you guys all the security clearances! Clearly you guys are really up to the task.

Sorry there is nothing else to say.

The Wall Street Journal brings us another chapter to the Book of Doom:

In his latest remarkable political reincarnation, onetime U.S. favorite Ahmed Chalabi has secured a position inside the Iraqi government that could help determine whether the Bush administration's new push to secure Baghdad succeeds.

In a new post created earlier this year, Mr. Chalabi will serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces mounting an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign across the city. The position is meant to help Iraqis arrange reimbursement for damage to their cars and homes caused by the security sweeps in the hope of maintaining public support for the strategy.........

...The new position is vaguely defined, and it is too early to tell how much power Mr. Chalabi will ultimately wield. How much money will be available to pay claims and how it might be awarded and disbursed remains to be finalized, too. But he is a skilled political infighter who has often shown a talent for making the most out of whatever hand he is dealt. Mr. Chalabi also maintains close ties with key political allies of Mr. Maliki such as radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which gives him extra sway within Mr. Maliki's government. Indeed, U.S. Embassy officials suggest Mr. Chalabi's closeness to Mr. Sadr is a major reason he was offered the liaison post.

Already, some U.S. officials are expressing concern about Mr. Chalabi's new role, fearing he will undercut the elaborate system of elected and appointed local governments that American officials have been cultivating over the past three years. American and Iraqi critics also worry that Mr. Chalabi, a Shiite, will use his clout to ensure that Sunni Muslim neighborhoods of the city are hit hardest by the new security crackdown, a move that would further inflame Iraq's sectarian tensions.

Then we see this from the Israeli liberal/centrist newspaper Haaretz. Can you imagine how depressing this is for Israelis right down there in the pit, to hear their almighty savior the United States of America is ORDERING them to STOP PEACE TALKS WITH SYRIA??!!

What evil fucking arrogance. Who is doing this shit? What is going on here? Now it's decidedly on the pro-peace movement to fucking nail and invert whatever the hell this shit is about. The Israelis WANT to get peace here, and Rice is stopping them. Disgusting.

The United States demanded that Israel desist from even exploratory contacts with Syria, of the sort that would test whether Damascus is serious in its declared intentions to hold peace talks with Israel.

In meetings with Israeli officials recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forceful in expressing Washington's view on the matter.

The American argument is that even "exploratory talks" would be considered a prize in Damascus, whose policy and actions continue to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and the functioning of its government, while it also continues to stir unrest in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. presence there.

...

When Israeli officials asked Secretary Rice about the possibility of exploring the seriousness of Syria in its calls for peace talks, her response was unequivocal: Don't even think about it.

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

And all this time I thought Robert Gates was gonna come in and sell everyone some guns under the table like the 1980s. Then we'd get to come home and barbecue.

Instead we are ordering the Israelis to avoid peace, and putting Chalabi in the key positions. This is like four years ago, only it's obviously self-destructive right on the face of it. Where are these intelligence analyses coming from? What is the grand strategy?

"It is not among the duties of resistance movements to court popularity from outside powers..."

--Azmi Bishara

It has been a while since I really made much note of the Palestinian situation, which is too bad because obviously it's a big deal. These photos were posted by Nizam on Flickr. I kinda stole em...

A Palestinian demonstrator hurls a stone at Israeli soldiers during clashes after the weekly Friday prayers in the village of Beit Omar village near the West Bank town of Hebron, 16 February 2007.

A young Palestinian stone thrower is dragged away 16 February 2007 by Israeli border policemen during scuffles in the eastern district of Jerusalem.

A friend just pointed me to a new blog, American Palestinian New Generation, where in turn I found some more interesting material.

A subtle irony: since of course the American media never discusses anything about Palestine in broad or realistic terms, in one mere post on this site we can easily outpace the entirety of months of the U.S. media with just a couple blockquotes. These two pieces are lengthy, but they are definitely a useful internal social and military analysis - that applies everywhere from Iraq and Lebanon to Los Angeles.

I'm going to cross post some material from a couple Palestinian websites. One is al-falasteenyia:

The Psychosocial causes for the Palestinian Factional War

By: Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj 14 February 2007

(comment from the blog operator: ) excellent article by Dr. El-Sarraj...he's done some great work in the past. He argues that this ongoing violence is a natural consquence of the imposed Israeli 'diet', among other things...

Many questions even after Mecca meeting remain … what has become of us? Our people have suffered for 59 years from displacement, homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but they withstood that suffering and never killed each other; so what happened to us? The late Arafat rejected a plan to kill Abu Nidal, who had already killed a number of Palestinian leaders, and said, “If we start this series of killings, we will never stop.” So what happened? I have heard stories about new forms of cold-blooded and callous murder, and about Palestinians denigrating and holding as infidel other Palestinians or accusing them of heresy and bigotry as a prelude to ostracizing or murdering them. I have also heard numerous stories about children who have been horrified and traumatized and have fallen victims to nightmares, loss of appetite, insomnia and fear of street-walking. What is happening to us? How could things amount to assaulting homes, mosques and universities?

Politics and political difference alone do not provide the answer. There are several additional social and psychological factors for what is befalling this society. A safe and stable environment is one that produces normal children, while the environment we have been living in since the occupation is one in which violence proliferates and becomes rampant.

I- Torture

After the 1967 Israeli occupation, a legitimate national armed resistance movement emerged involving multitudes of freedom fighters. I can recall that, while I was working at Al-Shifa hospital in the early seventies, we received several murdered and injured freedom fighters every day. Reacting to that resistance and in order to contain and destroy it, Israeli forces arrested tens of thousands of Palestinians and subjected them to systematic and various forms of torture as documented by research teams of both Palestinian and Israeli institutions acting in the area of defending human rights.

The effects of torture extend from the individual to his community. Research has found that a high percentage of torture victims become prey of mental illness which transform victims into problems for their own selves as well as for their own families. The commonest problem arising from torture is the violence which the victim directs to women and children, which in its turn makes the home a battlefield. The reason for such phenomenon is that the torture a young man is subjected to makes him harbor a desire for revenge by violent means and subsequently he unconsciously resorts to identify with the Israeli torturer. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the methods of torture used in Palestinian prisons are the same as those used in Israeli prisons; they have at times even been more atrocious and resulted in deaths among several prisoners in the early years of the PNA takeover. Indeed, in many instances, the Palestinian investigator was an ex-victim of Israeli torture. This phenomenon has created a cycle of internal violence. We note here that many Hamas members were tortured in Palestinian prisons. Feelings of immense hatred and desire for revenge started to build up and heighten culminating in accusations of infidelity leveled at leaders of security organs. All of these factors led to a state of polarization and division which has aggravated by Hamas coming to power. Now it seemed that some were willing to retaliate and take revenge from those who tortured them, a desire which was intensified by the fact that Hamas government was besieged and there spread a feeling that it was targeted and conspired against and that some Fatah leaders were accomplices in such conspiracy.

II- The First Intifada

Despite the glorification we attribute to the “children of the stone” whom we hold as examples of heroism, we cannot ignore the fact that they are flesh and blood and that they have been victims of various forms of violence. In our work at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program we conducted a research on three thousand Gaza children. The study has found that those children were subjected to several traumatic and violent experiences including beating, bone-breaking, injury, tear gas and acts of killing and injury, all of which experiences have left indelible effects on their psych. Yet, to many, the most excruciating experience was seeing their fathers beaten helpless by Israeli soldiers without resistance. Such an experience will ultimately transform a whole generation into something different as the second intifada showed; for the children of the first intifada are themselves the men of the second intifada. Those young men who are pursuing revenge and killing and are at times seeking even their own death are the selfsame children who cherished so many dreams of a better life but saw them fade away and fall apart the moment they saw their fathers fall helpless and defenseless victims of arrogant force incarnated in the Israeli soldier. No wonder then that the Palestinian child will see his model in that Israeli soldier and that his language will be the language of force and his toys and games will be the toys and games of death.

III- The Effects of Ongoing Violence

Israel systematically assaulted the Palestinian people in all aspects of their lives and it even escalated its aggressions during the second intifada as it resorted to a policy of house demolition; infrastructure, farm and facilities destruction; extrajudicial killing and mass detention of activists and systematic torture. Psychological research worldwide has shown that ongoing armed conflicts result in what is known as chronic social toxication which makes people and children less sensitive and more ruthless, less rational and more impulsive, less conversant and more violent. More significantly, new groups are formed of individuals who are alien to the family system and to the social fabric and who are powerful and violent enough to be capable of heinous killing. Ultimately, those individuals are viewed as untouchable masters and examples to be followed by the disadvantaged and vulnerable. The outcome of this is that brute force, not morality, emerge is the example to be followed.

Another effect of such social toxication is the phenomenon of social disintegration and disunity which is manifest in the decline of the father’s authority with all the moral values it embodies; and in the young men’s tendency to search for a new identity which they seek to be assertive and different from that of their vulnerable and downtrodden parents. There emerged the new form of identity provided by Islamic organizations and armed militias which in many cases supplanted national and filial belonging and rendered many persons alienated from their community.

IV- The PNA Performance [Palestinian National Authority --Dan]

The PNA performance has had a tremendous psychological impact on the Palestinians. Throughout its term of office, the PNA regime has been characterized by absence of law and justice, violation of human and individual rights, contravention against public lands, disrespect for reason, disregard of accountability and penalty amounting to rewarding of offenders, spread of favoritism and nepotism which created heightened feelings of bitterness, exasperation and hatred among the disadvantaged and destitute. All of these factors made the Palestinian citizen feel that only force in its different forms is the only resort.

The PNA added insult to injury as its security organs penetrated families. This reciprocally allowed families to penetrate security organs which became controlled by Fatah leaders as well as by heads of a large Gaza family. This resulted in gross security violations and social disorder, and culminated in numerous instances of law-breaking and aggressions against public and individual rights and property. In all circumstances, aggressors were backed either by their faction, family or a security organ and sometimes by all of them, which made power concentrated in the hands of influential individuals in the large authority apparatus. This eventually resulted in more disunity and division among those same families, and new armed and rival groups emerged by virtue of the official authority support; only to turn against that authority one day and dauntlessly assault some of its major symbols.

In this regard, it is noticeable that the Palestinian people’s performance in the first intifada was characterized by an overwhelming sense of solidarity, resilience and commitment to moral values, all of which seemed to be nonexistent in the second intifada which has been dominated by chaos, disintegration and division. Some observers attribute such change to the presence of the PNA and to its inability to assume a leading role, as well as to its acting as a barrier between the resistance and occupation. Its corruption and weakness made it easy for both parties to beat it.

V- Absence of a common enemy and uncontrolled arms

The actual non-presence of a common enemy in Gaza diverted the furious and enraged feelings of revenge from their natural path and redirected them into the Palestinian community among individuals, families and the factions contending for power and their militias. Under deteriorating social, economic, political and psychological conditions, it is only natural, as we have already warned that violence will prevail in the Palestinian society and among its individuals and groups. This situation further worsened with the proliferation of arms and plenitude of funds in the hands of contending parties and militias. Those factors on their own, however, cannot account for those bizarre acts of revenge, torture and killing committed in the recent clashes between Fatah and Hamas and which reflect inveterate grudge and hatred. Therefore, there is need to consider the other reasons.

Conclusion

The systematized repression and torture that the Palestinian people was subjected to under the Israeli occupation, the poor performance of the PNA as embodied in the absence of law and justice and maladministration all led the youth to seek and cling to a new identity which is different from that of their helpless parents and which holds that naked force is the only means to avenge themselves over the suppression they have long been subjected to.

The formation of those political, partisan and religious identities and the view that ultimate force is the model of heroism are the major cause of the status quo of Palestinian armed conflict which finds its fuel in many causes such as division, hatred, and vindictiveness of a generation that rebels against the declining family system and the chaotic PNA.

Fascinating stuff. Clearly a worthy subject to reflect on. Also reminds me a bit of typical American gangster social situations.

In place of appeasement: It is not among the duties of resistance movements to court popularity from outside powers, writes Azmi Bishara

For a people either rootless or under occupation, the Palestinians have made more than their share of diplomatic initiatives. The norm, one would think, would be for an occupied people to fight for liberation until they win or else maintain resistance, compelling the international community or the occupying power to come up with solutions to situations that are no longer tenable. The norm, then, is for the resistance to either accept the proposals and throw down its arms, or to reject them and keep on fighting until it is presented with more reasonable ones. The actions of the resistance, moreover, are presumed to be guided throughout by a central aim: liberation and the realisation of self-determination.

In the Palestinian case we see the reverse: they have come up with so many initiatives and proposals that the Palestinians, themselves, find it difficult to recall the aims of their struggle; not only the original aim but the latest one too. In the process they have lost the distinction between strategies and tactics, between tactics and self-deception, and between tactical goals and pleasing others. Not that their attempts to please others have been very successful; rather, they have whetted the appetite of others, who believe such attempts that are a sign of weakness, to up their demands. Israel will never agree to Palestinian ideas because it finds them pleasing; it will agree only if implementing these ideas suits its interests or if it is forced to agree. For example, when suicide bombings reached their height during the second Intifada, Israeli capital and big business forced their government to choose between resuming the peace process until a settlement could be reached or building the separating wall. The government chose the wall.

The Palestinians and Arabs have put forward more than enough initiatives and proposals for settlements and interim phases. Israel has consistently refused to take them up; clearly, it is waiting for more, undoubtedly out of the conviction that with every new proposal the ceiling of demands will lower. Surely it is about time for the Arabs to wait for Israel to come to them with proposals or initiatives that they can either accept or reject, as opposed to letting themselves be pushed around by the logic of unilateralism and the construction of separating walls. In the meantime, if they need some kind of unifying inspiration, they can always draw on the Palestinian national consensus document, which represents the broadest common ground, as well as the resolutions adopted by the PLO in successive National Council sessions. Since neither Israel or the US are about to produce an acceptable proposal for a solution in the foreseeable future, the Palestinians, especially following the agreement between Hamas and Fatah, should drive home the message that they, too, have no further proposals to make and that it is not their job to make proposals but rather to fight against the occupation, against the separating wall, against the Judaisation of Jerusalem and other national objectives.

Jerusalem, for example, does not exist in a vacuum. Its representatives in the Palestinian National Assembly were arrested and there has arisen no properly organised and financed leadership to take the place of Orient House and the neighbourhood people's committees. What happened? Somewhere down the line people stopped thinking in terms of the national rights of Jerusalem as a Palestinian Arab city and in terms of its inhabitants as a part of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian national project, and began to think in terms of Israeli civil rights. Sixty per cent of the children in Jerusalem go to schools that fall under the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem. The brutality of the circumstances they face inevitably force us to demand their rights -- by which we mean their Israeli rights -- from the Israeli Ministry of Education. However, as necessary as this process is, because it is taking place outside the framework and compass of the Palestinian national project it has merged into the process of the Israelification and annexation of Jerusalem and its people. I suppose, therefore, that I should not have been all that surprised, recently, to see a group of 12 school children from East Jerusalem on a visit to the Knesset as part of their civics programme, as if they were Arab students from inside the Green Line.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, as an architectural structure, is in danger, but Palestinian and Arab Islamic sovereignty over it is in greater peril; it has been virtually non- existent for some time. The people who are presumed to exercise this sovereignty -- the Palestinian people inclusive of Palestinian society of Jerusalem -- are also imperiled. The Arabs inside the Green Line pray there regularly and do their best to maintain it as a mosque but they are Israeli citizens and cannot exercise the rights of sovereignty. As admirable as their efforts are, they are not a state, nor even a state in the making. They are citizens of the occupying power itself. The transformation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, through closure and through the absence of an Arab challenge, into a mosque for Arabs inside the Green Line is hardly a bulwark against the peril. Is world opinion aware that Israel refuses to allow Muslims from the West Bank and Gaza access to one of Islam's most holy shrines, thereby violating their fundamental rights of worship? Yet the liberation of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque and the exercise of Arab and Muslim sovereignty over the sanctuary are curiously absent from all the Arabs' political and diplomatic moves connected with the "peace process". So, too, for that matter, is the protection of Arab society in Jerusalem, of the sanctity of their persons and of the Arab identity of Jerusalem, inclusive of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

If we add to this the erosion of the status of Jerusalem and the reduction of Palestinian refuges from a vital and primary component of the Palestinian cause to a collection of humanitarian causes of varying severity depending on the countries in which the refugees are living, we find that the Palestinian cause has been abbreviated to negotiation over a Palestinian state, as Bush and Olmert define it. The dependency on the "peace process" -- with the heaviest emphasis on "process" -- has left an enormous gap in Jerusalem, in the Palestinian Diaspora and in the Palestinian national project as a whole. "The process" has become an aim in itself: some politicians feel that their political careers and lives are not worth living if they don't meet an American official on a shuttle tour to the region, don't get themselves photographed with him or her, don't comment on the importance of their meeting and don't reprimand the US for its pro-Israeli bias at least once a negotiating season. The process similar to that of an extended family: it leaves stray waifs if it breaks down and plays Cupid for others until some calamity has the lovers bewailing their miserable lot in the coffeehouse. The process is everything, and those connected with it will be sure to tell you that America is in earnest this time; contrary to the general impression, they have detected a new sense of responsibility in whatever American official they have met. They will also tell you to be on guard against those who are working to give America an excuse to wash its hands of this region, and will be quick to remind you of Arab demagoguery and brinkmanship. The Arabs are the ones who lost Palestine, and while they are on the subject they'll open the whole historical record of black marks against Syria and Iran and against everyone who hasn't recognised Israel, and against the Arabs in general, those who are pressuring the Palestinians to sacrifice their national rights exempted.

Now that the Palestinians have made the transition from the chant, "Down with Zionism", to "Say no to internal warfare" two Palestinian delegations headed off to Mecca. They are under great pressure to come to an agreement over means to avert conflict, which both teams presume to be a form of crisis management. However, certain parties see this as a strategic opportunity to dictate the rules of the "game of nations" to Palestinians living under occupation, on the grounds that the agreement must be capable of securing the lifting of the blockade. The only interpretation of this stance is that the blockaders were right and the proof is that the blockaded party has "come to its senses" and changed its position. The inevitable corollary, of course, is that the politics of might works, that "might is right".

This will have important implications for the future of the "political process". Some members of the delegations have already threatened to call for early elections, which under the current state of tension is tantamount to a call for civil war.

Only a united front in standing up to the blockade can halt the blockade. The blockade loses its point if its architects can find no one in Palestine to capitalise on the blockade to build up an opposition powerbase and exploit the wretchedness of the people to foment anger against their elected government. [true! --dan]

Since the signing of the National Concord that was based on the Prisoners' Document the scramble to climb aboard the political dictates train has been the cause of each new clash that followed a truce. Under the circumstances of the blockade any agreement produced as the result of arm-twisting, blackmail, threats that the blockade will persist and calls for referendums and elections becomes the basis for yet further demands, triggering another bout of violence. If one's intentions are good there is nothing to be proud of in succeeding in bringing about new elections and quite a bit to be ashamed of in refusing to accept the results of legitimate elections. But establishing one's good intentions entails abandoning the logic of imposing conditions under the banner of the blockade and building upon a common political agenda of the nature of the National Concord. Indeed, this document is very suitable as a platform for a Palestinian government. That Hamas contributed to it and agreed to it represents nothing less than a revolution in its thinking and political outlook. Hamas had never been party to the drafting of the original National Charter, nor its subsequent amendments. The resolutions adopted by successive National Council assemblies, and the substance of the document itself, represents an enormous compromise on Hamas's own charter and, indeed, its electoral platform. That should be sufficient for the purpose of reaching an understanding internally.

If the purpose of some is to placate powers abroad, though, the path to the next round of domestic conflict is well marked: an agreement tailored to lift the blockade, authorisation of the PA president and his advisors to commence negotiations, agreements arrived at secretly with Israel, the announcement of these agreements accompanied by the threat that if Hamas refuses to accept them there will be a call for new elections or for a referendum, and so on. That there are pressures in this direction is clear from the announcement of a forthcoming meeting in Jerusalem between Olmert and Abbas, with Rice attending. If Olmert comes back from these, and subsequent talks with Israel and the US, with proposals that fall short of the minimum Palestinian demands and then threatens to put them to a referendum the Palestinians will be tearing at each others throats again. If, on the other hand, the Palestinian unification agreement rests on calls for a halt to the blockade and a halt to violations in Jerusalem and other such demands, it will strengthen the Palestinian people's ability to resist he occupation.

To produce and adhere to such an agreement requires that Palestinian leaders alter their way of thinking and acting. They must completely de-bug their operating platforms and eradicate the viruses that have programmed them into the tactics of dictating conditions in order to appease outside powers. If the agreement that resulted from the Mecca meeting is to succeed -- and there is no question that it must -- they need to learn to work together towards the fulfillment of common Palestinian objectives instead of playing to an audience outside.

In this regard it would be useful, and undoubtedly spare considerable acrimony, if they put the business of who receives what ministerial portfolio into proper perspective. It makes little difference, for example, whether the minister of foreign affairs belongs to Hamas or to Fatah as long as he is clearly subordinate to the president, as the ultimate foreign policy decision-maker. If, on the other hand, the decision-making process is a shared one between the government, the presidency and parliament, then it would be preferable if the foreign minister belonged to neither this faction nor that. Such independence would enhance his credibility and efficacy in implementing decisions that are the result of a balance and it will facilitate his reception abroad.

The same need not apply to the minister of interior. In all democratic countries, the minister of interior or security, as is the case of the minister of foreign affairs, is generally a member of some political party or other. Which party is of little consequence. Accepting the political affiliations of ministers is part and parcel of democratic life in which political parties form the primary identities involved in the political process. What is important is that the security apparatuses themselves are non-partisan. In the post-Oslo period Palestinian security services have been Fatah-based, in constitution, allegiance and lines-of-command. These services must be unified, neutralised politically and rehabilitated so as prevent partisan considerations from affecting internal appointments and operations. In this case there would be nothing wrong with a Hamas minister of interior, especially if such an appointment formed something of a counterweight to a Fatah president in his capacity as supreme commander of security forces. Conversely, it means nothing to have an "independent" as a minister of interior if the security forces themselves are not non-partisan and unless a distinct line has been drawn between security forces whose task it is to safeguard security and security forces as a surrogate army for the suppression of the resistance.

Well that wraps up that little problem, don't it? It's really a pity that the American establishment is so damn racist. Clearly Palestinians have a lot of interesting angles on political realities, and maybe they could finally help fish us out of the Iraqi clusterfuck and the general onrushing apocalypse...

Oh wait we gotta get some more West Bank settlements to setup the Rapture. I forgot about how important that is to Baby Boomers calling the shots these days.

These are about the last 500 hits on HongPong.com. As you can see, despite the geopolitical difficulties, we have the word out in the Gulf, Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Poland, Japan, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Jamaica, Honduras, Colombia, Switzerland, Germany, Morocco, Aruba, all the Baltic states and the auzzies.

The date range is misleading - as this is only the last blips 801-1300 on the total 1359 charted so far. i don't know why the blips are fat. they usually don't get fat.

hello to all, nice globe you got there....