Report: U.S. road map team due in region on Sunday

The U.S.-led team to oversee the implementation of the road map peace plan will arrive in the region on Sunday, Israel Radio reported Friday.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath said that the team will be composed of 13 inspectors and be based in Jerusalem.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf has been appointed special Middle East envoy to head the road map team.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will meet in the coming days with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas - the third meeting between the two leaders in recent weeks.

Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, will brief the prime minister on the anti-terror steps already taken by Palestinian Authority security chief Mohammed Dahlan, and how he intends to deploy his forces across the Palestinian territories.

An Israel Defense Forces officer told Israel Radio on Thursday that the Palestinian security services are showing the first signs of clamping down on terror groups.

However, the unnamed officer added that warning of possible terror attacks continue to flood in, with dozens arriving every week. He also warned that military activity in the territories will continue.

Senior security officials from both sides are due to hold a series of meetings in the coming days, culminating with a meeting between Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Dahlan.

In a meeting of senior IDF officers convened by Mofaz on Thursday it was decided not to ease restrictions on the Palestinians for now, despite the statements made by Sharon Wednesday in Aqaba.

Army Radio quoted security officials as saying that the easing of restrictions would begin when the Palestinians begin acting to foil terror attacks.

The issue of the removal of 12-15 "unauthorized" settlement outposts in the West Bank, which Sharon in his speech Wednesday promised to dismantle immediately, was not discussed in the meeting.

The defense establishment is concerned that removal of the outposts might be met with resistance - possibly armed - from some settlers. But National Religious Party chairman Effi Eitam, who represents the party most identified with settlers, told Army Radio on Thursday that public figures and religious figures have joined him in preemptively condemning any violence against representatives of the state.

"For Jewish reasons, legal reasons, democratic and humanitarian reasons, for every reason, we fully condemn any violence against [Israeli] security forces and against the State of Israel's symbols of democracy," Eitam said. "If someone on the outer margins will consider it or God forbid do something, we're saying from the outset that he will have no part in our camp."

But that doesn't mean his party won't object to the evacuation of outposts, Eitam said. "We will oppose the evacuation of outposts, but this opposition will take place in the framework of the law."

Security officials said that the recent agreements to advance the road map have led to a rise in the number of threats against Sharon. Shin Bet Security Service sources said that there is no need to increase the level of the prime minister's personal security, as he is currently very well-protected, in accordance with the recommendations of the Shamgar Committee, which investigated the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

In the coming days, the Shin Bet will decide if Sharon's public appearance schedule should be altered in light of the threats. The security establishment says that the fear of clashes with settlers due to the evacuation of illegal outposts is not based on concrete warnings, and even according to defense sources, "more and more the expressions such as 'Sharon will follow in Rabin's path' are being heard among some sectors of the settler community."

Around 20,000 settlers and their supporters rallied Wednesday night in Jerusalem's Zion Square to protest against the deal struck at the Aqaba summit.

The Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District (Yesha Council) issued a statement calling the Aqaba summit "a humiliating ceremony in which the Israeli government celebrated its surrender to Palestinian terrorism." Yesha Council Secretary-General Adi Mintz said the government was likely take steps that would cross "red lines."

The Prince and the Pauper
by Dmitri Korkin
Translated by Yashiko Sagamori

While running for the White House, President Bush described
himself as “a uniter, not a divider”. Nothing illustrates his amazing
ability to unite with just about anything better than a photograph
published in the June 2, 2003 issue of the New York Times:

President Bush and the Saudi ruler Prince Abdullah hold hands as
kindergarteners on an outing. The president looks awkward. His
brow is furrowed with many grave concerns. The prince is smiling
happily, looking as if he had just stolen Bush’s lunch money. A truly
amazing union!

Prince Abdullah — not yet the king, but getting there — is a de
facto head of the Saudi royal family. The Saudi royal family governs
not just the oily realm allotted to them by the British, but also the
Wahhabi sect of Islam, which is the dominant form of Islam in their
country. Mass media, regardless of their national origin or political
orientation, keep telling us that the “real” Islam is the religion of
peace and love. Unlike the “real” Islam, Wahhabism openly calls for
the physical extermination of the infidels for their malevolent refusal
to convert to the “true faith” or submit, as “dhimmis”, to volatile
mercies of the faithful.

The sect is rich and powerful: it is backed by
the Saudi oil. Its popularity among Sunni Moslems all over the world
is growing. It controls a vast network of medressehs (Islamic
seminaries) in Pakistan that mass-produce not just the ideologues of
terrorism but also its organizers and executioners. All September 11
highjackers — 15 Saudis and 4 Egyptians — were Wahhabis.
Wahhabis were among Arabs captured and killed in Chechnya. The
sect is behind Al Qaeda and lists Osama bin Laden among its
followers.

Osama bin Laden decided to attack the United States for a
number of compelling reasons, the main one being the blunt refusal
of the Americans to convert to Islam. The Saudi government shares
many of his less unrealistic concerns, for instance, the American
support for Israel. When in the wake of the Arab attack against the
United States, Prince Abdullah came to New York to enjoy the view
of the still smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, he did not
hesitate to openly state that America had been punished specifically
for its friendship with Israel. Having learned of that statement, Mayor
Giuliani promptly returned the check for $10 million he had received
from the generous prince.

It was terribly impolite, of course, but the
good mayor has been famous for his rudeness since he ejected
Arafat from an event organized for foreign dignitaries a few years
earlier.

In any case, Arabs have never made a secret of the crime for
which they punished the United States on September 11, 2001. The
complicity of Saudi Arabia in the attack was proven beyond
reasonable doubts within a few hours after the destruction of the
World Trade Center. Optimists were hoping America was going to
show the Arabs the appropriate response, commensurate with the
crime.

The most optimistic scenario included simultaneous nuking of
Mecca and Medina, followed a few hours later by dropping the third
bomb on the capital of the first Arab country whose leader would be
stupid enough to express anything but complete satisfaction with
such turn of events.

Although I am not a bloodthirsty person, I believe that such drastic
measures would have ended Arab terrorism forever, without
sacrifice of American lives or spending hundreds of millions of
dollars on a war with no end in sight. They would have led the
surviving Moslems all over the world to sincerely conclude that
Jihad, while remaining, according to the Koran, the most sacred duty
of the faithful, is nothing but a deeply personal, completely internal
struggle for spiritual perfection that has nothing to do with war in any
form or shape. The leading mullahs would have proclaimed that
conversion of any person to Islam is invalid unless enthusiastically
voluntary. And, last but not least, the Moslem community of the
world would have turned their lives into a practical proof of the
undeniable fact that Islam is the most peaceful and tolerant religion
of all.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to suggest this course of
actions to President Bush. As a result, while declaring his War on
Terror, he emphasized that it was not a war against Islam. “Islam is
not the enemy,” — he kept repeating in his speeches. Meanwhile
Moslems all over the world, including even the United States,
effortlessly and conclusively proved him wrong by openly
celebrating the murder of 3 thousand Americans, dancing in the
streets and distributing sweets.

Strictly speaking, the cause for their
celebration as well as the reason why September 11 turned Osama
bin Laden into their shining hero remain unclear: they immediately
rejected any idea of Osama’s involvement and blamed the attack on
the CIA and Mossad instead. In any case, Mecca, Medina, and the
capital of the stupidest Arab leader in the world, whoever that might
be, remained, unlike the World Trade Center, standing, while Bush
successfully attacked Afghanistan and replaced there one bunch of
America-hating Moslems with another.

Taking into account that Bush’s war in Afghanistan has miserably
failed to either seriously hurt Al Qaeda, alleviate the danger of
terrorist attacks against American people and interests, or replace
the Stone Age form of government in that country with any
semblance of democracy, we have no choice but to admit that it was
simply a face-saving operation by the sole super-power on the
planet.

Unlike the Afghan invasion, the war in Iraq initially appeared to
have some sense. Obviously, Iraq could not and was not going to
threaten the United States. Considering that, despite all efforts, no
weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, we can
conclude that Iraq’s representatives, while denying the existence of
forbidden weapons, were telling the truth, which, most probably, has
demoralized their regime, based on the most outrageous lies, to
such a degree that it rendered Iraqis incapable of even token
resistance to the invaders.

Nevertheless, being an Arab country,
Iraq has been a part of the very soil on which terrorism grew. Today
Iraq, tomorrow Syria, and gradually we might reach the very source
of the terrorist infection, Saudi Arabia. Such course of actions would
have inevitably rendered PLO harmless, like a weapon dropped by a
fallen enemy, and peace would have finally come to the Middle East.
As to Mecca and Medina — what can we do? — let them stand. I’d
rather see them destroyed, but if such is the price of peace, so be it.

You probably remember how Bush, declaring his War on Terror,
said all kinds of right things: you are either with us or against us, we
are going after all terrorists regardless of any distinctions and
flavors, we are not going to negotiate with terrorists, and many other
things no one could possibly argue against.

I just kept asking myself
why wouldn’t Russia’s President Putin want to become a close ally
of George W. Bush: it would let him go tougher against the
Chechens and reap untold benefits after the war. Now I can see that
Putin, unlike myself, could see through Bush from the very onset of
that strange war. That’s the difference between an experienced KGB
operative like him and a hapless civilian like myself. President Putin
has proven himself smarter than me — good for him!

As the death sentence to Israel known as the “roadmap” shows,
President Bush heeded the advice of a generous Prince Abdullah
and decided, instead of Israel, to support “Palestinian” terrorists.
That’s why the prince and the president look on that picture like a
couple of kindergarteners on a tour of a Jewish cemetery. The
president looks concerned: he keeps stumbling upon graves of
people he used to be friends with. The prince in the meantime is
openly gloating over his historic victory over the last superpower of
the infidel.

Could it be that those who called Dubya an idiot ...
were actually right?

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