Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke with US President George W. Bush on Thursday afternoon, focusing primarily on ways of making progress in Israeli-Palestinian channels.
Olmert also updated Bush on talks the prime minister held in Germany, Italy and Jordan.
The prime minister met on Thursday with US Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd, who have been on a tour of the region. The senators updated Olmert on their visits to Iraq, Lebanon and Syria; however, they did not relay any messages from Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Prime Minister's Office on Thursday also denied reports in the Palestinian media that a meeting had taken place between Olmert and his Lebanese counterpart, Fuad Saniora, in Sharm e-Sheikh.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881947576&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
This article's so long that even I won't post it, but go to the site and read it:
Introduction
The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya organization, which perpetrated terror attacks in Egypt throughout the 1980s and '90s, has in recent years undergone an ideological reversal exceptional among Islamist organizations. The leaders of the organization have undertaken to forsake violence and have apologized for past attacks and now promote a new ideology of coexistence with the regime. In addition, they have gone to great lengths to argue against Al-Qaeda's ideology and to restrict its influence on Muslims.
The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya leadership's ideological reversal is an outstanding example of a collective shift away from violence by leaders of a prominent radical Islamist organization. This paper has been an attempt to detail the chronological and ideological development of this reversal, to map the changes in the group's thought, and to explain the reasons for this change. The story of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya has an importance that extends well beyond Egypt, as it provides insight into the ideological structure of radical Islamism on the whole and the potential found in Islam itself to defuse the Islamist trend.
This paper reviews Al-Gama'a's cessation of violence and its aftermath as reflected in the Arab media.
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA30906
It does show how groups can evolve. Interesting. Not typical, but interesting.