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Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASES Sunday, December 20, 2009 United States Transfers 12 Guantanamo Bay Detainees to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland Region Twelve detainees have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of each of these cases. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including potential threat, mitigation measures and the likelihood of success in habeas litigation, the detainees were...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims' relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.

Dr. Levin is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. He earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, a B.A./M.A. in English language and literature from Oxford University, an M.D. degree from Penn and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. He is a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and maintains a private practice in psychiatry. Dr. Levin has written extensively on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Washington Times, and The Jerusalem Post. On the...

Members of the media are focusing much attention on Yasir Arafat's legacy. Many of the historical briefs and timelines being published whitewash his decades-long involvement in terrorism. While they note that Arafat led Fatah and the PLO, the terrorist acts committed by these groups are often ignored. For example, a Nov. 4 AP timeline, reproduced in the publications and Web sites of many different media outlets, lists only one failed act of sabotage in 1965, 3 suicide bombings in December of 2001 and one in 2002. In fact, groups under Arafat's direct or indirect command – including Fatah, Black September,...

"I think it's very important for our friends, the Israelis, to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. And it's very important for the Palestinian people to have a peaceful, hopeful future." So spoke President Bush just two days after his re-election, just exactly as news reports were leaking Yasser Arafat's demise.The combination of Mr. Bush's stunning new mandate and Mr. Arafat's near-death condition will lead, I predict, to a quick revival of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy after months of relative doldrums and to massive dangers to Israel.The doldrums will cease because the Bush administration views Mr. Arafat as the...

Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are known internationally for the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. As ruinous as that violence has been, another cancer permeates Arafat's administration; its name is corruption. From firsthand experience, I understand just how deep it is. Here is what I know.From Optimism to Dismay On July 1, 1994, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman, Yasir Arafat, arrived triumphant in the Gaza Strip, watched by millions on television across the world. I was already in Ramallah, having traveled there from my family's exile in Qatar in the weeks after Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,...

The world has decided that the territories are beyond the pale for the Jews. In a crash course on Jewish literacy, dealing with the Pale of Settlement published by Aish.com we learn "From 1791 until 1915, the Jews living in Eastern Europe were confined by the Czars of Russia -- starting with Catherine the Great -- to an area known as the "Pale of Settlement" (meaning "borders of settlement"). "Jews were specifically expelled from Moscow and St. Petersburg and forced into the Pale. Later they were also expelled from rural areas within the Pale and forced to live only in...

Ah, the travails of a tiny country caught at the crossroads of greater powers. Sound familiar? Lithuania? Armenia? Israel? There have been so many holocausts that we could easily pick one out of a hat and discuss it. But because of recent developments in Damascus and Beirut, we’ll discuss Lebanon today. In a move I found quite surprising, the U.N. Security Council voted Friday in, support for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon's upcoming presidential election, conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence. The new U.N. resolution also called for, the restoration of...

Israeli health minister Danny Narveh told a number of UN and other officials during an informal chat on Wednesday that Arafat must be physically removed from his Ramallah base. In a stark warning amid increasing tension, one of the western diplomats at the Narveh briefing described the next 24 hours as critical ... and he made it clear his express concern focussed on Arafat's personal safety. On condition of anonymity, the offical told Aljazeera.net on Wednesday that Yasir Arafat may not remain in the Palestinian territories once Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returns from India. Sharon is due back in...