Posted on 07/27/2002 9:08:46 AM PDT by Phil V.
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It's a horror story, periodIt was a troubling week, and not only because of what was explained as an intelligence failure, in the bombing of Salah Shehadeh's house. It was no less a worrisome week - in fact, a horrifying one - because those Israelis curious enough to want to know, did not get a full picture of what looked like a chance to at least partially stem the stream of blood in the country and the territories.
Government's explanations and disinformation won't help, nor will the singing chorus from most of the press, enlisted into the cause to obscure the facts. A small group of politicians and defense establishment officials did not do what was necessary - to make all possible efforts to preserve lives.
There has not been any authoritative confirmation of reports about a cease-fire agreement being finalized. Past lies by both sides and thick smoke screens are clouding the picture. So, this has to be phased with all due caution, but reports from every direction add up to a stream of proofs that show that along with the women and children, a genuine opportunity to break the cycle of terror and retaliation was buried in Gaza. If that's true, the prime minister, along with two other ministers and a small group of senior army officials, behaved repulsively.
Without enough deliberation, they suddenly decided to do what they were prevented from doing eight previous times in the last few months, most recently just a day and a half before the F-16 was sent over the Gaza neighborhood. One of them, the defense minister, approved the operation by phone from London. And once the full extent of the disaster become known, the other, Shimon Peres, was like two of the three monkeys who didn't see, hear or speak.
The prime minister made the decision with the skill that does not always preserve the welfare of his citizenry - he can now do anything he wants. The 40 kilometers of yore are child's play for him now. He apparently does not want any agreement - not the agreement that was being discussed over the two weeks prior to the bombing, nor any broader deal.
The explanations were embarrassingly transparent. Does anyone believe that the much-praised intelligence services, which have indeed done an extraordinary job collecting information over the two years of the current intifada, knew less that night than any boy scout troop could have seen?
No less believable is that the sophisticated spies working for Military Intelligence, the Mossad, and Shin Bet could have missed the details of an intensive international effort being made from Washington, through Europe, to the Arab capitals and Ramallah, to dramatically reduce the activities of the Tanzim and Hamas.
The day after the bombing, all sorts of reports surfaced about discussions and negotiations that practically nobody in the government or press had mentioned before - except for an unusual statement by Ahmed Yassin that appeared to be out of context.
Let's assume that an admirable cloak of secrecy had indeed been wrapped with atypical efficiency around the back channel talks. Even so, someone in the Bermuda triangle of this government - Sharon, Peres, Ben-Eliezer - must have heard at least something about it. Peres, for example, must have heard something in his three-hour conversation in Tel Aviv on Saturday with the new Palestinian Interior Minister Ahmed Rizak Yehiyeh, and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who were coordinating cease-fire contacts among Palestinian groups.
On Wednesday, Yedioth Aharonoth's military correspondent Alex Fishman was the first to provide details about a draft of a Tanzim declaration approved only a few hours before the eager squeeze on the trigger over Gaza. European and American newspapers also reported about the window of opportunity slammed shut.
But the prime minister kept it secret. Was it because he doesn't want a cease-fire? And if he doesn't want one, despite his passion for saving lives, is it because it might have led to a political move much too vigorous for him? An orchestrated government campaign of blurring the facts, successful once again at recruiting some of the media as accomplices, spewed contemptuous retroactive reactions to something the prime minister did not want to see succeed.
And the Americans once again played their dubious role in the matter. The White House sent to its diplomatic pasture another of its cliches about "heavy handed" Israeli actions. Where has it been? Why didn't bombers of Afghanistan back into dust warn Israel in advance against any attempt to sabotage the diplomatic moves?
It's a horror story - every way you look it at.
By Gideon Samet
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What was buried in Gaza the other day was not a hope for peace, but a conniving and butchering animal, another Charlie Manson with a Koran and a PA flag drenched in the blood of Jews.
Squashing this bug was a good thing...it stops him from committing mass murder in the immediate future.
Assuredly, other vipers will take his place, and share his fate.
No sympathy. None for the innocent Afghans that we've killed. None for these people. None for the Iraqis who will die soon. They want sympathy they might try acting civil from now on.
Yes, the problem is Sharon, not the never ending obsessive hatred of the the Arab world towards Israel and all Jews.
I thought that it was a rather well constructed statement - artfully done - catching - cogent - insightful. It IS instructive that you attempt to find fault with a grammatically correct sequence of words as opposed to the statement. But then, perhaps, I have overestimated your ability to comprehend the increasingly apparent likelihood that PEACE is Israel's greatest existential threat.
No, Muslim extremists are the greatest threat to Israel. The second greatest threat is the idiots who believe that all will be well if Israel caves in to the terrorists' demands.
If you are an American, know this. The paliswine terrorists would kill you and yours, just for being Americans, and would laugh with glee while doing it.
Poor Phil may think that he writes a bit artsy-fartsy, but he needs to spend more time studying history.
Arafat began threatening an intifada in April of 2000, months before Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was even thought of. Training camps for Palestinian youth began that summer, Arafat rejected the peace deal that was offered him, then the official Palestinian publication Al-Sabah, dated September 11, 2000 -- more than two weeks before Sharon's Temple visit -- stated: "We will advance and declare a general Intifada for Jerusalem. The time for the Intifada has arrived, the time for Intifada has arrived, the time for Jihad has arrived." Muslims shot, stabbed, and bombed a number of Israeli civilians and soldiers before Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, which he had every right to visit. Sharon's Temple Mount is nothing more than an excuse -- it's like the South Central L.A. hoodlums using the Rodney King verdict as an excuse to loot, rob, and pillage the neighborhood.
Note to Phil: you're a smart guy and probably a pretty likable person. Don't believe all the steaming shovelfuls of crap you're being fed just because people with names like Dan Rather and Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle are the ones who are holding the shovels. Don't even believe me. Do some research on your own.
Muslim extremists are useful idiots standing between Israelis and the mirror. In peace the mirror of introspection would reflect an image too brutal to comprehend. It would leave Israel and Israelis a truth too raw - too tortured - to be digested by Jewish senses of morality, justice and GOoDness.
Israel is as exposed to the tragedy of civil war as are the Palestinians. The Palestinians cannot "digest" the forfeiture of the right of return. Israel cannot digest the loss of Judea and Samaria. War is better than civil war.
Yes, you idiots, Israeli lives.
Why don't you just move into the West Bank and distribute your Israeli-suicide crap from over there?
it would be more convincing and would incite the Muslim Mass Murderers more effectively.
And what do "palestinians" see when they look in the mirror?
Besides the face of death...
And images of their own babies strapped with "pretend" explosives?
It is humorous to see propagandists using fancy words in an attempt to have their superior enemy defeat themselves.
Nice try though.
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Bombing Gaza A blow at peace Jul 25th 2002 | EAST JERUSALEM From The Economist print edition Has Israel blown up more than a Hamas leader, his family and neighbours?
AT FIRST the Israeli government said it was self-defence against terrorism; it later said that a mistake might have been made. The Palestinians said it was a massacre. Outsiders deplored it, with even the United States saying that "this heavy-handed action does not contribute to peace". Whatever it was, Israel's assassination of Hamas's military leader, Salah Shehada, will almost certainly lead to more killing in a land already soaked in blood. In the night of July 22nd-23rd, an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-tonne bomb on Mr Shehada's apartment in Gaza city. The army said it thought that the place was empty, save for the Hamas leader and his bodyguard. But Palestinians and others point out that the building sat in the residential heart of Gaza's most densely peopled town. Aside from Mr Shehada and his guard, 13 Palestinians were killed and 145 wounded. The dead included nine children, one aged two months. Mr Shehada has long topped Israel's list of Palestinian quarries, wanted for scores of attacks on soldiers and settlers in Gaza, and also, says the army, for planning suicide bombings inside Israel. Ariel Sharon called his death "one of our greatest successes". He added that "it is always regrettable if civilians are hit." Palestinians detect a darker purpose behind the assassination. Last week, Hamas gunmen blew up a bus near a West Bank settlement and machinegunned its civilian passengers. But a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on July 17th was the first attack inside Israel itself for a month. And, since then, there have been Palestinian stirrings that allowed for hope that the violence would at least be diminished. On July 20th, Abdul Razek Yahyia, the Palestinians' interior minister, announced a new security plan devised by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The plan, which was well received by Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister, is aimed at reducing the "atmosphere for violence" in the Palestinian areas. It requires the gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army from recently re-occupied Palestinian cities, and the gradual resumption of the PA's policing duties, including the confiscation of illegal arms and the arrest of lawbreakers. Other moves, too, were in the air. At the time of Mr Shehada's killing, say Palestinian sources, plans (encouraged by diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the EU) for a new Palestinian "ceasefire" were on the verge of being agreed. The initial move would be that militias linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement - such as the al-Aqsa Brigades - declared a moratorium on suicide bombings inside Israel as a first step to a cessation of hostilities. Perhaps more important, something was in the air inside Hamas itself. On July 22nd, the Islamic faction's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said that his men would stop killing Israeli civilians if the army withdrew from Palestinian cities, lifted the sieges on Palestinian areas, freed recently detained prisoners and ended the assassinations of Palestinian leaders. The sheikh has also been floating the idea of some sort of unwritten pact with Israel that would confine violence to military targets in the occupied territories. This would be akin to the "understandings" (to avoid attacks on civilians) between the Israeli army and Hizbullah during the last years of Israel's occupation of south Lebanon. While still remote from being acceptable to Israel, all this showed that some change was being contemplated. No longer. In the aftermath of the bombing, Hamas's military arm promised not to rest "until the Zionists see human remains in every restaurant, bus, bus stop and street" (ie, more of the same, many Israelis would say). The al-Aqsa Brigades said that "martyrdom operations" would be continued. Is this what Israel's prime minister wants: the continuation of a conflict that bars peace talks? Many Palestinians argue that there have been several occasions when Mr Sharon has destroyed periods of relative quiet by ordering the assassination of Palestinian leaders, thus inspiring their militias to revenge. They point to the killing of Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in August 2001, and of Raed Karmi, leader of the al-Aqsa Brigades, in January 2002. Both these assassinations were preceded by relative calm, and followed by blood-letting. The horror of the Palestinians' revenge, or so the conspiracy theorists argue, drums up an Israeli "consensus of fear" behind Mr Sharon's policy on not letting go the West Bank. Most observers have doubted that there can be much truth in such theories. But after yet another untimely killing, the Palestinians' argument is winning new recruits, and not only in Palestine. |
So that's what Sharon gave up in order to kill Hamas's military leader? Good trade-off considering how well the Palestinians adhere to their written pacts (like Oslo) and how they define the meaning of "military" (non-Muslims) and "occupied" (everywhere).
Please tell me you're smart enough not to buy this crap. If not, then please send me your phone number because I can get you a great deal on a used car.
That reminds me of the old joke: “except for that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?” But seriously, do we ascribe the reduction of homicide bombers to a sudden Palestinian desire for peace, or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank?
”On July 20th, Abdul Razek Yahyia, the Palestinians' interior minister, announced a new security plan … aimed at reducing the "atmosphere for violence" in the Palestinian areas. It requires the gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army from recently re-occupied Palestinian cities, and the gradual resumption of the PA's policing duties, including the confiscation of illegal arms and the arrest of lawbreakers.”
Only "Good Old Charlie Brown” believes that Lucy won’t pull the ball away at the last minute. And only someone as simple-minded as Charlie Brown believes this proposal.
”Other moves, too, were in the air … say Palestinian sources”
Perhaps more believable than the ones who proclaimed thousands dead in Jenin?
"… The sheikh has also been floating the idea of some sort of unwritten pact with Israel that would confine violence to military targets in the occupied territories.”
What a deal! Give us control of our killing machine again and we will only kill your soldiers, not your women and children. Makes you want to grab a pen and sign on to this agreement? RIGHT!!!
”Is this what Israel's prime minister wants: the continuation of a conflict that bars peace talks?”
My response would be: F**K your peace talks. We have had generations of peace talks. We have worn out our tongues with talking and our pants with sitting down. The way to have peace with Israel is to stop killing. Absent that, talks are no longer an option.
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