African States Oppose US Presence

Taken from The Guardian, UK, Monday June 25, 2007
By Simon Tisdall in Washington

The Pentagon's plans to create a new US military command based in Africa have hit a wall of hostility from governments in the region reluctant to associate themselves publicly with the US "global war on terror".

A US delegation led by Ryan Henry, the principal deputy undersecretary of defence for policy, returned to Washington last week with little to show from separate consultations with senior defence and foreign ministry officials in Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti and with the African Union (AU).

An earlier round of consultations with sub-Saharan countries on providing secure facilities and local backup for the new command, to be known as Africom and due to be operational by September next year, was similarly inconclusive.

The Libyan and Algerian governments reportedly told Mr Henry this month that they would play no part in hosting Africom. Despite recently improved relations with the US, both said they would urge their neighbours not to do so, either, due to fears of future American intervention. Even Morocco, considered Washington's closest north African ally, indicated it did not welcome a permanent military presence on its soil.

"We've got a big image problem down there," a state department official admitted. "Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."

Another African worry was that any US facilities could become targets for terrorists, the official said. Dangled US economic incentives, including the prospect of hundreds of local jobs, had not proven persuasive.

Mr Henry said African officials had agreed during the talks that counter-terrorism was "a top security concern". But he added: "The countries were committed to the African Union as the continent's common security structure. They advised us that Africom should be established in harmony with the AU."

The US talks with Libya appear to have been frank. "In the area of security, they are looking for Africa-only solutions... I wouldn't say we see eye to eye on every issue," Mr Henry said. "I wouldn't say we see eye to eye on every issue."

Mr Henry emphasised the US was not seeking to supplant or supersede African leadership but rather to reinforce it. He said the creation of Africom would not entail the permanent stationing of large numbers of US troops in Africa, as in Asia and Europe.

Its overall aim was to integrate and expand US security, diplomatic, developmental and humanitarian assistance in collaboration with regional allies, not increased interventionism, he said.

Unveiling the plan in February, president George Bush said Africom would advance "our common goals of peace, security, development, health, education, democracy and economic growth".

But African opposition appears to have modified Washington's approach. Mr Henry said the latest plans envisaged "a distributed command" that would be "networked" across several countries, rather than a single, large headquarters in one place.

"There will be a staff headquarters... with a four-star in-theatre commander," he said. "(But) information technology allows us to bring people at dispersed geographical locations together. We are investigating the possibility of having the command distributed in a number of different nodes around the continent."

Mr Henry said this approach matched that of Islamist terrorists. "Al-Qaida is working in a distributive structure itself. It's establishing nodes throughout the region and there's been an establishment of al-Qaida in the Maghreb."

The state department official said the US remained confident that partners for the Africom project would eventually be found, although concerns persisted about political stability, misgovernance and corruption issues in some potential sub-Saharan partner countries.

The official added that the command's security focus would include suspected terrorist training camps in Mali and southern Algeria, the spread of Islamic fundamentalist ideas and violence in the Maghreb, northern Nigeria and the Horn of Africa, suspected uranium smuggling in the Sahel region - and addressing the political instability and economic deprivation that fed extremism.

Energy supply is another factor sparking heightened US interest, notably in west Africa. Gulf of Guinea countries including Nigeria and Angola are projected to provide a quarter of US oil imports within a decade.

US aid and development projects in Africa are expanding rapidly. Mr Bush asked Congress this month to double to $30bn (£15bn) over the next five years US funding for Aids relief, plus $1.2bn to fight malaria. Washington has also broadened its involvement in efforts to end the Darfur crisis. Laura Bush, the First Lady, embarked on a five-day consciousness-raising tour today, to Senegal, Mozambique, Zambia and Mali.

Ethiopian Premier Admits Errors on Somalia

Taken from The Washington Post, Friday, June 29, 2007; Page A16
By Stephanie McCrummen

NAIROBI, June 28 -- Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Thursday that his government "made a wrong political calculation" when it intervened in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a fight against a growing insurgency.

Addressing Ethiopia's Parliament, Meles said his government incorrectly assumed that breaking up the Islamic movement that took control of most of Somalia in June 2006 would subdue the country. He also said he wrongly believed that Somali clan leaders would live up to unspecified "promises."

"We made these wrong assumptions," Meles said on a day when a roadside bomb killed two Ethiopian soldiers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and two aid workers were shot dead in northern Somalia.

Opposition members of Parliament have accused Meles of making the same mistake in Somalia that critics say the United States made in Iraq: launching a military intervention without having a political plan.

Many Ethiopian intellectuals and political leaders opposed the intervention because they said it would inevitably create the conditions for the sort of Somalia-based terrorist attacks that Meles intended to contain by invading the country.

In December, Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's transitional government dislodged the Islamic movement, which was popular for the relative security it had brought after years of brutal warlord rule.

Ethiopia and the United States said the Islamic movement had been hijacked by extremists and accused it of harboring terrorists, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a charge the Islamic leaders denied.

Since January, fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and Somali government troops has displaced more than half of Mogadishu's population while the humanitarian situation has deteriorated. On Thursday, Amnesty International accused Kenya of blocking 141 trucks of food and other aid headed for more than 200,000 displaced Somalis suffering from "alarming levels" of malnutrition.

Many businessmen and civil society leaders in Mogadishu say that over the past two weeks, they have been unjustly labeled "al-Qaeda" and their homes and offices have been ransacked by Ethiopian and Somali troops.

One internationally known civil society leader, Abdulkadir Nur, said that troops plundered equipment in his offices and that his colleagues and relatives had been arrested without charge.

Nur said he is simply against what he considers an Ethiopian occupation.

"I do have the right to express my personal views," he said in a statement. "And the transitional government has no right to abuse its power to destroy my livelihood, my personal property and abuse my colleagues and co-workers."

Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

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Like the WMD issue in Iraq, Eithopia (backed heavily by the US) assumed something that wasn't true. Without any proper evidence they launched a military intervention in an area of Sudan that had stability and law and order after decades of lawlessness and fighting between warlords. Yes it was a rival to the Federal Governmentval administration but it provided stability and hope to the people living in the region. Just because a political or social group has Islamic in it's title doesn't mean that they are a threat to society. When the UIC took over they opened the ports and airports -first time in decades and resumed commerce with other neighbouring countries. The only people threatened were the Warlords and the countries that were supported these warlords.

In an interview featured in the BBC Online Somali section in June 2006, Sheik Sharif Shaykh Ahmed said "the union of Islamic courts was established to ensure that Somali people suffering for 15 years would gain peace and full justice and freedom from the anarchic rule of warlords who refuted their people to no direction." After capturing Mogadishu, the Islamic Courts had enacted a series of decrees and laws that had temporarily brought hope for Somali expatriates, local minorities and women.

U.N. Closes Down Saddam Weapons Monitors

Taken from Yahoo News, Fri Jun 29 2007
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council voted Friday to immediately shut down the U.N. bodies key to monitoring Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs under Saddam Hussein — a decision an Iraqi diplomat said would close "an appalling chapter" in his country's history.

The resolution terminating the mandate of the U.N. bodies responsible for monitoring for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was approved by a vote of 14-0, with Russia abstaining.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin objected to the council's failure to comply with previous resolutions demanding that the inspectors certify that Iraq has no unconventional weapons before terminating their mandate. "The adoption of this resolution does not give any clear answers to the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," he said.

Since 2005, the United States has been trying to get the Security Council to end the work of the inspectors, who were pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and were barred by the U.S. from returning.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the efforts of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq "have demonstrated that the current government of Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction or delivery systems."

Iraq's new leaders also have been lobbying for the council to stop using the country's oil revenue to pay the salaries of the inspectors — and to have all money remaining in the U.N.'s oil-for-food account transferred to the government.

Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Hamid Al-Bayati also called it "a historic day," saying adoption of the resolution turns the page on "an appalling chapter in Iraq's modern history, which had a destructive impact on the people of Iraq."

The resolution authorizes Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to transfer all remaining unallocated funds in the oil-for-food account to Iraq's Development Fund — about $60 million.

The resolution will "terminate immediately" the mandate of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission known as UNMOVIC, which was charged with certifying that Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs and long-range missiles were dismantled.

It would also end the mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, which was responsible for uncovering and dismantling the country's nuclear weapons program.

UNMOVIC is the outgrowth of a U.N. inspections process created after the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S.-led coalition force ousted invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

In the 1990s, U.N. inspectors uncovered significant undeclared banned weapons programs including Iraq's biological warfare program that Saddam sought to conceal, the chemical nerve agent VX and other advanced chemical weapons capabilities, and the indigenous production of long-range ballistic missile engines. IAEA inspectors helped unravel the true extent of Iraq's clandestine nuclear program, which never succeeded in producing a working weapon.

Since leaving Iraq in 2003, UNMOVIC has continued to study satellite imagery in efforts to keep track of equipment with dual civilian and military uses and it has continued to train staff inspectors and experts who could be called on for special assignments.

On Thursday, UNMOVIC published a 1,200 page account of Iraq's weapons programs and the lessons learned in the verification process.

The resolution asked the secretary-general to ensure "that sensitive proliferation information or information provided in confidence by member states is kept under strict control."

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The only WMD in Iraq have been the presence of US & allied troops. It's time we brought back our boys home - this illegal war serves no one and too many innocent people have died and too many enemies have been created - all due to lies by our politicians.

Egyptian Billionaire ‘Who Spied For Mossad’ Found Dead In UK

From The Times, UK, June 28, 2007
By Rajeev Syal

An Egyptian billionaire financier who feared for his life after being accused of being a Mossad spy was found dead outside his Mayfair flat yesterday in suspicious circumstances.

Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late President Gamel Abdel Nasser, was found beneath his fourth-floor flat in Carlton House Terrace.



Police were treating his death as suspicious. Friends of Mr Marwan, a former shareholder in Chelsea Football Club, said that he had feared assassination after being named three years ago as an agent during the Yom Kippur war.

Rumours of his death circulated in London’s Arab community last night. Some believe that he may have taken his life after a serious illness was diagnosed.

Mr Marwan’s death will send shockwaves across the Middle East and among some of Britain’s wealthiest people. His associates included Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer, Ken Bates, the football club chairman, the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the late Tiny Rowland.
If found to be murder, his death will carry echoes of last year’s assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent.

Mr Marwan, 63, was identified as an agent by the Vanity Fair writer Harold Bloom in his book Eve of Destruction, which detailed his involvement in the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Although Nasser, who humiliated the British Government at Suez, died in 1970, Mr Marwan, his son-in-law, was part of the inner circle of his successor, Anwar Sadat, who started the war.

The identity of the agent, described by a postwar Israeli inquiry commission only as “the source”, had been a closely guarded secret. Evidence pointed towards someone high in the Egyptian Establishment.

From published accounts based on Israeli sources, it was alleged that Mr Marwan was a “walk-in” who entered an Israeli embassy in Europe and offered his services in 1969. Extensive checks convinced Mossad that he was not a double agent.

In the ensuing years Mr Marwan provided information on Egypt and the Arab world that Moshe Dayan, the Israeli Defence Minister, and others would later term priceless.

Some believed that he was a double agent. Mr Marwan denied the claims, saying that he had never worked for the intelligence communities on any side. Mr Bloom acknowledged that he could be assassinated.

Mr Marwan was believed to have been born in Egypt into a wealthy family. He married Nasser’s daughter Muna in the 1960s and they had two sons and a number of grandchildren.
Rumours of how he made his money have circulated within the Arab community for many years. Many say that he was an arms dealer and had been introduced to plenty of contacts by Sadat.

Mr Marwan considered London his main home, according to friends, despite owning property across the world. Standing at 6ft 2in and very thin, he was seen at a social gathering in Central London last week with his wife.

Mr Marwan was a friend of Ken Bates, the former Chelsea chairman, and at one point held a 3 per cent share in Chelsea Village, one of the holding companies of the club. Later he was believed to be the subject of a Financial Services Authority inquiry into the sale of shares to Roman Abramovich, the current owner.

At one point, friends say, Mr Marwan was a close associate of Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods and a fellow Egyptian. He was also believed to have owned the Son Vida, one of the best hotels in Majorca.

Last night police kept a tight cordon around Carlton House Terrace, a white Grade I listed building overlooking St James’s Park that stretches between Buckingham Palace and Horse Guards Parade. Friends of the family said that Mr Marwan’s wife was flying back to Britain from Egypt.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: “We were called at around 13.40 to Carlton House Terrace. The death is being treated as suspicious at this stage and the inquiries are under way.”
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According to Israeli News Agency Haaretz, former Mossad head Zvi Zamir has said that reports in Israel about Dr. Ashraf Marwan, Israel's Egyptian agent who warned of the pending outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, led to his death. "I have no doubt that reports published about him in Israel caused his death," Zamir told Haaretz Thursday, in response to Marwan's mysterious death in London on Wednesday. The real damage, said Zamir, concerns the implications the case has for the future. "There are serious concerns about our ability to recruit quality sources in the future," the spy master said. Zamir, who questioned Marwan during a secret meeting held in London on the Friday on the eve of the 1973 war, said he had no idea whether the Egyptian had committed suicide or had been assassinated. "This is a matter to be investigated by the British police. But it is clear that the reports and the exposure of his name by Eli Zeira [who was head of Military Intelligence in 1973] have led to his death," Zamir said.

Egypt Jails Engineer For Spying For Israel

Taken from Yahoo News, Mon Jun 25 2007
By AFP

Egypt's state security court on Monday sentenced an engineer to 25 years in jail for betraying nuclear secrets to Israel.

Mohammed Sayyed Saber, 35, who was arrested at the beginning of the year, had pleaded not guity to the espionage charges and looked shocked when the verdict was read out.



During his trial, he insisted that any information he had divulged was already in the public domain and had been handed over with the blessing of the authorities.

Saber acknowledged that he had supplied information about the Egyptian atomic energy authority where he worked to presumed agents of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence agency.

But he insisted that he had kept the Egyptian embassy in Saudi Arabia, where he lived, abreast of his activities and denied that they had amounted to espionage.

"All the information I gave was never with the intention of spying," Saber told the High State Security Court.

"I was not a spy and the information I gave was not secret, it was all published on the Internet," he said.

Prosecutors had charged that Saber helped Israeli intelligence hack into the Egyptian atomic agency's computer system between February 2006 and February this year, in exchange for 17,000 dollars and a laptop.

They said that he also provided Israeli agents with classified documents to do with the Inshas nuclear research centre, north of Cairo.

Saber acknowledged that he had been approached by two presumed Israeli agents -- one Irish, one Japanese -- who are in absentia co-defendants in the trial, after publishing his CV online.
He admitted that in a series of contacts culminating in a visit to Hong Kong they had grilled him on aspects of Egypt's nuclear programme, a line of questioning that he said had made him feel "uncomfortable" enough to contact the Egyptian authorities in late 2006.

The questions had focused on whether Egypt had a uranium enrichment programme, what contacts it had with declared nuclear powers and what security arrangements were in force at the atomic energy authority.

"I contacted Ahmed Bahaa El Din, the official in charge of security at the Egyptian embassy in Saudi Arabia and told him everything," Saber said.

"He asked me to write a detailed report and give it to him, which I did," he told the court, adding that he had been asked to remain in touch with the presumed Israeli agents.

Saber admitted that in May 1999 he had visited the Israeli embassy in Cairo in the hope of getting a scholarship to study nuclear engineering at Tel Aviv University, but insisted that there had been nothing treacherous about that.

"I was not appreciated in my job and hoped I could find better opportunities in Israel," he said, adding that he was paid just 700 Egyptian pounds (120 dollars) a month.

CIA Conspired With Mafia To Kill Castro

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 27, 2007
By Simon Tisdall

The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone" in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba's communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday.


The Cuban president Fidel Castro, seen here in 1959. Photograph: Reuters

The disclosure is contained in a 702-page CIA dossier known as the "Family Jewels" compiled at the behest of then agency director James Schlesinger in 1973. According to a memo written at the time, the purpose of the dossier was to identify all current and past CIA activities that "conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947" - and were, in other words, illegal.

The dossier covers operations including domestic surveillance, kidnapping, infiltration of anti-war movements, and the bugging of leading journalists.

But its detailed information on assassination attempts against foreign leaders is likely to attract most attention.

The plot to kill Mr Castro, whom the US government at the time considered a threat to national security and a stooge of the Soviet Union, begins quietly and sinisterly in August 1960.

The documents released yesterday describe how a CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro".

The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval."

Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements". Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the 'syndicate' (who) controlled all the ice-making machines on the (Las Vegas) Strip and (who) undoubtedly had connections leading into the Cuban gambling interests".

The CIA is careful to cover its tracks. According to the dossier, Maheu told Roselli that he (Maheu) has been retained by international businesses suffering "heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action. They were convinced that Castro's removal was the answer to their problem and were willing to pay the price of $150,000 (£75,000) for its successful accomplishment".

Roselli was also told that the US government was not, and must not become aware of the operation.

Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine.

Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone". Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations.

At a meeting at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Gold/Giancana suggested that rather than try to shoot or blow up Mr Castro, "some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro's food or drink would be much more effective".

He said a corrupt Cuban official, named as Juan Orta, who was in debt to the syndicate and had access to the Cuban leader, would carry out the poisoning. The CIA subsequently obtained and supplied "six pills of high lethal content" to Orta but after several weeks of abortive attempts, Orta demanded "out" of the operation.

Another disaffected Cuban was recruited to do the job, but he demanded money up front. In the event, the dossier relates, "the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" (in April, 1961).

Yesterday's document release under the Freedom of Information Act also reveals details of CIA bugging and surveillance operations and the handling of a Soviet defector and KGB agent, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, in 1965-67. Also made public are 147 pages of documents relating to CIA assessments of the Soviet and Chinese cold war leaderships.

"The CIA fully understands it has an obligation to protect the nation's secrets, but it also has a responsibility to be as open as possible," CIA director Michael Hayden said yesterday. "The declassification of historical documents is an important part of that effort."

The documents are available at: www.foia.cia.gov/

At Summit in Egypt, Israeli Leader Pledges to Seek Release of 250 Palestinian Prisoners

Olmert Makes 'Gesture Of Goodwill'

Taken from The Washington Post, June 26 2007; A14
By Ellen Knickmeyer

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Monday to seek the release of 250 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons in response to calls from Arab leaders that he take steps to shore up the emergency government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian officials spoke positively of Olmert's announcement but said he had failed to give timelines or other specifics. Olmert renewed promises to ease Israeli restrictions on West Bank residents and reestablish Israeli-Palestinian discussions toward Palestinian statehood.

"We need to see how they will implement the promises on the ground," said Nabil Amr, a spokesman for Abbas, after a summit in this Egyptian resort that featured closed-door bilateral talks among the four leaders attending. "Two-hundred-and fifty prisoners is a good step, but if that's the best he can offer it's not even legitimate."

The meeting brought Abbas and Olmert together with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states that have signed peace treaties with Israel.

Abbas said the sense of urgency created by Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip this month should be funneled into reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The two sides last negotiated in earnest in 2001.

"Today we have an opportunity to fulfill our dream of coexistence," said Jordan's King Abdullah II. "The only alternative will be more years wasted in negotiations and losses."

The Jordanian king spoke in an open session during which the four leaders read statements into the television cameras, sitting around a massive square table that kept each leader yards apart from his counterparts.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak convened the summit to explore resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, bolstering Abbas's West Bank administration and containing Hamas in Gaza.

In mid-June, Hamas forces routed fighters loyal to Abbas's Fatah movement in Gaza, prompting Abbas to dissolve a Fatah-Hamas government and declare a new administration whose authority appears limited to the West Bank. Hamas, which has proposed reconciliation talks but has been rebuffed by Fatah leaders, says its government is still legitimate.

Olmert's announcement regarding 250 of the roughly 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody represented the only new Israeli move Monday.

"As a gesture of goodwill towards the Palestinians, I will bring before the Israeli cabinet a proposal to free 250 Fatah prisoners who do not have blood on their hands, after they sign a commitment not to return to violence," Olmert said.

Referring to an Israeli soldier captured a year ago by Hamas-affiliated groups, Olmert said: "Abbas more than once made a commitment to me that he will act to secure the release of Gilad Shalit from the extremists who are holding him. I believe that his intentions in this matter are sincere, but he himself faces a wall of silence and cruelty by the Hamas and terrorist organizations."

The release likely would not meet conditions set by Shalit's captors, who seek the freedom of Hamas members held by Israel.

Arab leaders had gone to the summit urging that Israel ease checkpoints that impede the lives and work of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel's security forces have blocked previous pledges by Israeli civilian leaders to reduce the checkpoints, saying they are essential to Israel's security. The United Nations says the number of checkpoints has increased more than 40 percent since Israel promised in 2005 to reduce the barriers.

Olmert noted that he and the Arab leaders likely would face criticism at home for taking part in Monday's summit. At its end, closed-circuit TV at the summit site showed Israeli and Arab leaders beaming at one another, with Olmert repeatedly resting a hand on Mubarak's back and Mubarak reaching out to touch the shoulder of the Israeli leader. Arab satellite channels did not show these cordial scenes.

Egypt and Jordan worry that Hamas's ascendance will encourage Islamic activism on their own soil. Mubarak's administration has arrested hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and changed the constitution to block the movement's political rise. The Islamic political movement shocked Egypt's government in 2005 by winning nearly a fifth of the seats in the lower house of parliament.

"Today in the Sharm el-Sheikh summit they are all afraid and trying to find a way out," said Essam el-Eryan, a leader of the Brotherhood, in a telephone interview after the summit. "King Abdullah is scared. Half his population is Palestinian -- what if free elections are held today in Jordan?"

Mubarak, whose military trained hundreds of Fatah fighters in recent months, "is afraid from the revelation of his ties with Fatah," Eryan said. "Who trained Fatah? Who allowed the U.S. funds and weapons leak to Fatah? Who spoiled the Mecca accords?" he asked, referring to a pact brokered by Saudi Arabia to try to hold together the Hamas-Fatah government.

Correspondent Scott Wilson in Jerusalem and special correspondent Nora Younis in Sharm el-Sheikh contributed to this report.
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The release of 250 prisoners "WITH NO BLOOD ON THIER HANDS" is a good start by Olmert. Lets hope he releases ALL PRISONERS that are kept in Isreali Jails for no good reason - This includes thousands of Lebanese prisoners who were abducted during the Israeli occupation of The Lebanon in 1982 that lasted a decade. A lot of innocent women and children are kept in overflowing Israeli prisons - action must be taken by international communities for thier immediate release, that is the only reasons political groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah exists and like the IRA in Northan Ireland will have no purpose when land and prisoners are returned back.

CIA Reveals Decades Of Plots, Kidnaps And Wiretaps

The New York Times today reported that for four years, Vice President Dick Cheney had resisted routine oversight of his office’s handling of classified information, and when the National Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president’s office suggested abolishing the oversight unit, according to documents released yesterday by a Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. What is Cheney trying to hide from the public in the week that this is happening...

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 23, 2007
By Simon Tisdall

The CIA is to declassify secret records detailing operations including illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots and kidnapping, undertaken from the 1950s to the early 1970s, at the height of the cold war and the Vietnam conflict.The records were compiled in 1973 at the behest of the then CIA director, James Schlesinger, and collected in a 693-page dossier known as the "family jewels". Although some of its contents have been leaked, the CIA has refused until now to put the full dossier in the public domain.

Mr Schlesinger acted after discovering that veteran CIA officers whose burglary of a Washington hotel room triggered the Watergate scandal, had received the agency's cooperation in carrying out "dirty tricks" for President Richard Nixon.According to the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Mr Schlesinger directed his officials to collate details of any other current or past agency activity that "might fall outside CIA authority" - that was, in other words, illegal. The results of the internal trawl were breathtaking. But within months of finalising the dossier, William Colby replaced Mr Schlesinger as CIA chief.

When the New York Times published a report on the CIA's domestic surveillance operations in December 1974, apparently based in part on the dossier, panic erupted inside the administration of President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded Nixon. At a damage-limitation meeting in January 1975 with James Wilderotter, the deputy attorney-general, Colby laid bare the "skeletons" in the dossier.

Minutes of the meeting, obtained by the National Security Archive and posted at gwu.edu yesterday, list the skeletons one by one.

Domestic operations include the illegal detention and interrogation of a Russian defector, the wiretapping of columnists Robert Allen and Paul Scott, and the surveillance of other journalists including the late Jack Anderson. Several illegal break-ins are also listed.

In the minutes, Colby says some US citizens had been subjected to "unwitting" CIA drug experiments to induce "behaviour modification". The CIA also illegally amassed 9,900 files on Americans involved in anti-war activities.

The minutes state that the CIA "plotted the assassination of some foreign leaders including [Fidel] Castro, [Patrice] Lumumba [Democratic Republic of Congo] and [Rafael] Trujillo [Dominican Republic]." They go on: "With respect to Trujillo's assassination on May 30 1961, the CIA had 'no active part' but had a 'faint connection' with the groups that in fact did it."

In an official record of a White House meeting with President Ford the next day, on January 4 1975, a rattled Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state and national security adviser, argues that the existence of the "family jewels" dossier, and its partial leaking, may turn into a major scandal - with the FBI investigating the CIA.

"What is happening is worse than in the days of McCarthy. You will end up with a CIA that does only reporting, not operations ... What Colby has done is a disgrace," Mr Kissinger tells Ford.

"All these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. If they come out, blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy [the former attorney-general] personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro."

Announcing the decision to release the dossier next week, plus 11,000 pages of "hard target" intelligence gathered about the USSR and China from 1953-73, General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said they offered a "glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency".

Hackers Breach Security At The Pentagon

Last week the US securit chiefs stated that is was bolstering its network defences following a report which claimed that China had established "information warfare units". A cyber war is on the cards. Well I wonder who is winning the war and are the Chinese the real enemies?

The US Defence Department has been forced to shut down parts of its network after a cyber attack

Taken from The Times, UK, June 22, 2007
By Holden Frith

Hackers have forced the Pentagon to shut down a large number of computers by penetrating parts of the security system.

Reports suggested that 1,500 computers were taken offline, but the US Department of Defence said it could not confirm how many computers were affected.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler, a Pentagon spokesman, said that some computers were still out of action after the attack, which happened on Wednesday. He said that they would be back to normal soon.

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, said that the computers were shut down when a breach of the system was detected. He said the cause was being investigated.

Few details about the attack were released, but Donal Casey, a security consultant at Morse, said that the action taken by the Pentagon suggested that the breach was serious.

“The most frequent form of attack is denial of service attacks [in which hackers swamp a website by directing thousands of computers to access it simultaneously], but they can usually be handled without taking systems down,” Mr Morse said. “In this case it seems that there was an actual breach and someone was on the system.”

Lieutenant Commander Peppler said that Defence Department systems are probed every day by a wide variety of attacks.

“The nature of the threat is large and diverse, and includes recreational hackers, self-styled cyber-vigilantes, various groups with nationalistic or ideological agendas, transnational actors and nation-states,” he said.

Mr Gates said that Pentagon operations were not affected, but acknowledged that there would be “some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.” When asked whether he was personally affected he said: “I don’t do e-mail. I’m a very low-tech person.”

Although security for Pentagon networks is among the tightest in the world, the threat could not be completely eliminated, Mr Casey said. “By the nature of websites and e-mail systems that are public-facing, they’re always exposed,” he said.

Army Officer Says Gitmo Panels Flawed

The Bush administration acknowledged Friday that its top officials were once again actively debating recommendations about how and when to close the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but officials said they thought it could be weeks or months before a decision was made. The revival of a bitter, long-running debate behind closed doors in the Bush administration comes only a few months after the Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice allegedly told President Bush that they believed that Guantánamo’s continued existence was undercutting American foreign policy efforts around the world, and would ultimately prove a stain on Mr. Bush’s legacy. Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice allegedly met strong resistance from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who argued that moving the prisoners to American prisons would open a floodgate of litigation. Vice President Dick Cheney has also been reported to be a staunch opponent of transferring prisoners to American soil. Whether the above is true more and more people are opposed to the Guantanamo system and the abuse given to the so called prisoners. Here is another person...

Taken from Yahoo News, Sat Jun 23
By BEN FOX, Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - An Army officer who played a key role in the "enemy combatant" hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence.

His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only "generic" material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and the intelligence agencies.

"What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence," Abraham said in the affidavit submitted on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an "enemy combatant."

Abraham's affidavit "proves what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," said a lawyer for al-Odah, David Cynamon.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, defended the process of determining which detainees should be held, saying the "procedures afford greater protection for wartime status determinations than any nation has ever before provided."

"Lt. Col. Abraham provides his opinion and perspective on the CSRT process. We disagree with his characterizations," Peppler said. "Lt. Col. Abraham was not in a position to have a complete view of the CSRT process."

Abraham said he first raised his concerns when he was on active duty with the Defense Department agency in charge of the tribunal process from September 2004 to March 2005 and felt the issues were not adequately addressed. He said he decided his only recourse was to submit the affidavit.

"I pointed out nothing less than facts, facts that can and should be fixed," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his office in Newport Beach, Calif.

The 46-year-old lawyer, who remains in the reserves, said he believe he had a responsibility to point out that officers "did not have the proper tools" to determine whether a detainee was in fact an enemy combatant.

"I take very seriously my responsibility, my duties as a citizen," he said.

Cynamon said he fears the officer's military future could be in jeopardy. "For him to do this was a courageous thing but it's probably an assurance of career suicide," he said.

Abraham said he had no intention of leaving the service. "I have no reason to doubt that the actions I have taken or will take uphold the finest traditions of the military," he said.

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and 2005, with handcuffed detainees appearing before panels made up of three officers. Detainees had a military "personal representative" instead of a defense attorney, and all but 38 were determined to be "enemy combatants."

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was "intensive scrutiny" when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn't an "enemy combatant," they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

Matthew J. MacLean, another al-Odah lawyer, said Abraham is the first member of the CSRT panels who has been identified, let alone been willing to criticize the tribunals in the public record. His affidavit was submitted to a Washington, D.C., appellate court on al-Odah's behalf as well as to the Supreme Court.

"It wouldn't be quite right to say this is the most important piece of evidence that has come out of the CSRT process, because this is the only piece of evidence ever to come out of the CSRT process," MacLean said. "It's our only view into the CSRT."

In April, the Supreme Court declined to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement. Lawyers for the detainees have asked the justices to reconsider. The Bush administration opposes the request.

General: Bush Knew About Abu Ghraib

On the same day that we discovered that the US Military rescued Two dozen boys who had been found starved and neglected at a government-run orphanage for special needs children in the Iraqi capital, we also find out this news piece...

Taken from Al-Jezeera News Agency, JUNE 19, 2007

The White House has denied assertions by a former leading military investigator of the Abu Ghraib scandal that the president and leading military officials knew about the abuse at the prison in Iraq before it became public.

A spokesman said George Bush first learnt about the abuse from media reports.

"The president said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on television," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the weekend at his ranch.

Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker magazine report quoting retired Major-General Antonio Taguba, as saying "the president had to be aware" of the abuse of prisoners by US military guards.

New Yorker: The general's report


Taguba says Bush and top US military brass knew about the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison [EPA]

Taguba also said Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary who had initially denied knowledge of the lurid photographs of prisoner abuse, was at best, "in denial".

"The photographs were available to him – if he wanted to see them."


Photographs of US jailers abusing Iraqi prisoners outraged many [GALLO/GETTY]

Referring to Rumsfeld's May 7, 2004, testimony before congress in which he said he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Taguba said Rumsfeld was "trying acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves".

He said Rumsfeld and the military's top brass who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

The photographs taken by US jailers humiliating prisoners who were naked or hooded, on leashes or piled in a pyramid, became one of the few things Bush said he regretted about the Iraq war and apologised for on May 6, 2004.

Taguba spoke of other, undisclosed material, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees and "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee" that was never made public or mentioned in any court.

Taguba said that all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial.

Warnings and consequences
"From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Taguba told the New Yorker, adding that his orders were to investigate the military police only, and not their superiors."

Eleven US soldiers have been convicted for abuses related to detainees at Abu Ghraib.

These [military police] troops were not that creative," he said.

"Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority."

Seymour Hersh, who interviewed Taguba for the New Yorker, told Al Jazeera that Taguba had been warned by General John Abizaid, the then commander of the US Central Command, that he would be investigated along with his report.

"I'd been in the army 32 years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia," Taguba said.

Taguba was told to retire by January 2007 and was offered no reason.

He said he was "ostracised for doing what I was asked to do".

Well aware that his former military colleagues would be angry at his speaking out, the retired general said: "The fact is … we violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values.

"The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.

Related Items:
We got it wrong says former torturer
Taken from The Sydney morning Herald, June 11, 2007

CIA Man Sentenced For Afghan Abuse
Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, 13 Feb 2007

Rumsfeld Okayed Abuses Says Former U.S. General
Taken from Yahoo News, 25.11.06 By Reuters News Agency

Abu Ghraib: The pictures that told the truth
SMH, Monday, August 14, 2006

US Finds Neglected Iraqi Orphans

Taken from the BBC, 19 June 2007

Two dozen boys have been found starved and neglected at a government-run orphanage for special needs children in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The children were discovered last week by a US military advisory team that was out on patrol with Iraqi soldiers.



The emaciated boys, some near death, were left naked and covered in their own excrement on concrete floors, images broadcast by CBS News showed.

Real Player - BBC/CBS Video Broadcast

The US soldiers found fully stacked kitchen shelves and new clothes nearby.

The boys had been kept in the shocking conditions for more than a month despite the orphanage having been staffed, the troops said.

Staff unconcerned
The 24 orphans were first spotted during a daytime patrol in central Baghdad by the US 82nd Airborne Division.

"They saw multiple bodies laying on the floor of the facility," Staff Sgt Mitchell Gibson told CBS News.




"They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball [to] try and get some attention," he added.

"And actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down."

Another member of the patrol, Lt Stephen Duperre, said he had found the discovery devastating.

"The kids were tied up, naked, covered in their own waste, faeces"

Lt Duperre said the soldiers found three members of staff cooking for themselves when they entered the orphanage.

Inside was a kitchen full of food and a storeroom stocked with piles of brand-new clothing.

The soldiers believed it was being sold to local markets instead of giving it to the disabled children.

The orphanage's caretaker, who had a well-kept office, and two women employees have since disappeared.

However, two security guards have been arrested on the orders of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

The boys have since been transferred to another orphanage in the city and have begun to recover.

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This is the best piece of good news to come from Iraq in along time. I hope these kids have a better life in the new orphanage. Lets pray they will be safe and be placed into care in good homes with good families looking after them.

31 Children Freed From Global Paedophile Ring

Police Identify 200 Paedophile Suspects In Britain After Smashing Online Ring

Taken from the Times, UK, June 19, 2007
By Sean O’Neill

Thirty-one children have been taken into care after British police smashed an online paedophile ring operating in 35 countries.

More than half of the children, who ranged in age from 18 months to early teens, live in Britain.

The international inquiry, called Operation Chandler, has broken new ground by uncovering evidence that many of the men involved were child abusers and not simply consumers of child pornography.

“No investigation has rescued so many young and vulnerable people from a group of hardcore paedophiles,” said Jim Gamble, the head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), which led the inquiry.

At the centre of the paedophile ring was Timothy Cox, 28, from Buxhall, Suffolk, who ran a chat room entitled “Kids the Light of Our Lives”, from which members of the group could watch children being abused live through video streaming and file-sharing technology.

When he was arrested last September, Cox, who worked for his family’s microbrewing business in Buxhall, had 75,960 indecent images – including footage of serious sexual assaults on children – on his computer. He used the nickname “Son of God” when he was online and another identity, “I do it”, when he was trading indecent images. Evidence was uncovered to show that he had supplied 11,491 images to other users of his site.

The material found on Cox’s computer. which was kept in his bedroom at the large farmhouse that he shared with his parents and sister, included 316 hours of film footage. Three officers from Suffolk police spent three months viewing and categorising the material.

Cox pleaded guilty at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday to nine offences of making and distributing indecent images of children. Charges of inciting child abuse and procuring children for abuse were dropped.

Judge Peter Thompson said that the images on Cox’s computer included very young children “being subjected to sadistic, painful abuse”. Detectives who interviewed him said that he showed no remorse.

Judge Thompson imposed an indefinite jail term on Cox, saying that the Parole Board would review his detention after he had served four years and eight months.

After Cox’s arrest in September, the administration of the chat room was taken over by a group member whose usernames included “silent-blackheart” and “lust4skoolgirls”. Investigations led Ceop to Gordon McIntosh, 32, the manager of a video-streaming company, who lived in a bedsit in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.

McIntosh is in custody on remand, having pleaded guilty to 29 charges of making, possessing and distributing obscene images. He will be sentenced at Luton Crown Court next week. Detective Sergeant Gez Ellis, of Hertfordshire police, said: “When McIntosh wasn’t asleep he was online in this chat room. This was his life.”

Of the 700 suspects identified worldwide as members of the chat room, 200 live in Britain. Half of those suspects, including teachers and others in positions of trust or with access to children, have already been arrested, charged or convicted. The other 100 are under police investigation.

Among those already in prison is a 32-year-old man from Stockport, Greater Manchester, who was jailed for a minimum of seven years last week after admitting child rape.

Graham Conridge, 60, a music teacher from Bedford, who posed online as a teenage boy to persuade girls to strip and perform indecent acts in front of webcams, was jailed for 32 months in April.

Hundreds of thousands of images of abused children that were recovered during the operation are now being examined by victim identification teams around the world.

Mr Gamble added: “This is not about pornography – this is about child abuse. Let’s call them what they are – a ring of paedophiles who abused children online and shared images of that abuse.”

Mr Gamble said investigations into the chat room’s users were continuing around the world, with arrests in Canada, Australia and America.

Closing the net
— Operation Cathedral 1998: international investigators dismantled the “Wonderland Club”, unearthing 180 suspects. It led to the convictions in Britain of seven men who exchanged 120,000 indecent images of children.

Wonderland was the first international online paedophile gang identified by investigators
— Operation Ore 2000-03: began after US investigators uncovered a network of child pornography sites hosted in Texas and accessed by credit card subscribers around the world.
Thousands of Britons’ credit card details had been used to access the sites and police forces faced a deluge of cases.

The lessons learnt led to the formation of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
— Operation Wickerman/ Chandler 2005-present: the ongoing inquiry that began in the US and led to Operation Chandler and the arrest of Timothy Cox.

Cox took the name “Son of God” from Royal Raymond Weller of Clarksville, Tennessee, who ran the “kiddypics” abuse website under the name “G.O.D.”, meaning Galactic Overlord Duplicate. Weller pleaded guilty to child abuse offences in 2006

-------------------------------------------------------
I hope these guys get life in prison rather than the 3 or 4 years. It is sad to read that half of those suspects, including teachers and others in positions of trust or with access to children.

Blair's Farewell Shot At Muslims & Russia's Putin

Extracted from the BBC, 16.06.07

On Saturday, Britain announced the knighthood for the author the of "The Satanic Verses" in an honors list timed for the official celebration of the queen's 81st birthday.

Salman Rushdie, who went into hiding under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, has been knighted by the Queen. His book The Satanic Verses offended Muslims worldwide and a bounty was placed on his head in 1989.



But since the Indian-born author returned to public life in 1999, he has not shied away from controversy. A devout secularist, he backed Commons Leader Jack Straw over comments on Muslim women and veils and has warned against Islamic "totalitarianism" after the publications of the Danish cartoons, which satirised the Prophet Muhammad. The son of a successful businessman, Salman was born into a Muslim family in Mumbai in 1947. It was immediately condemned by the Islamic world because of its blasphemous depiction of the prophet Muhammad. It was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities and in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's spiritual leader, issued a fatwa, ordering Salman's execution. In 1998, the Iranian government said it would no longer support the fatwa, but some groups have said it is irrevocable.

Former KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky, who became the highest-ranking Soviet spy to defect to the west, has also been honoured by the Queen. He has been appointed a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.



The recognition in the Birthday Honours Diplomatic List means he now holds the same title as book spook James Bond. And like 007, Mr Gordievsky operated in the murky world of secret assignments, assassinations and allegations.

Disillusioned with the political situation in his homeland, he operated as a double agent during the Cold War. He passed on an unprecedented amount of information to British security while serving as KGB bureau chief in London. His help led to the expulsion of 25 Soviet agents working undercover in the UK. At the time, his defection was hailed by then British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe as "a very substantial coup for our security forces".

Mr Gordievsky was MI5's greatest asset between 1982 and 1985, when his cover was blown and he was ordered back to Moscow. He was eventually smuggled back to the West and has since written a number of books about the operations of the KGB. Fictional superspy James Bond was made a CMG in Ian Fleming's novel From Russia With Love. Mr Gordievsky's honour is for services to the security of the UK.

--------------------------------------------------
Well, what can i say? A kick in the teeth for Muslims around the world and for Putin. How could an author become a knight? what has he done to deserve such an accolade? Yes, he has written a few books but has severed relationships between the UK and many Muslim countries. He is no role model nor has he bought any success to the UK. This knighthood was a delibrate ploy against the Muslims and in particulr Iran for thier condemnation for the recent captur of UK sailors. I wonder if Tony Blair will still have his hero status in Albania and Seria Leon? I wonder if he will be able to live a normal life in the UK. He is most likey to emigrate to the US where he is still popular. As for the knighthood for the former KGB spy - well it had to happen didn't it? after the death of former Russian agent Andrei Lugovoi in the UK this seems to be the ideal way for Blair to upset his friend Putin. The UK is very dependant on foreign Gas supplies, I wonder if the UK will be receiving any Gas supplies from Russia? The only good news for the people of Britain is that Blair is leaving office very soon.

Israeli-American Failure (In Palestine)

Taken from Ynet news, Israel, Opinin Section, 06.17.07
By Menachem Klein

The Hamas takeover in Gaza has exposed the Israeli and American strategic bankruptcy. Four basic perceptions shared by Israel and the US have been proven false:

First, what happens in Gaza won't reach us. We left the Strip, built a defensive wall around it, and as far as we're concerned – the Palestinians within the wall can do whatever they want, and even kill each other. Wrong: The internal chaos is boiling over to us as well and hits Sderot and the western Negev.

The second perception was that we're not responsible for what's going on in the Gaza Strip.
Wrong: We control the Strip from the outside, through the air, and everything that moves on the ground. Part of the Gaza Strip infrastructure is connected to Israel. And in order to go there we don't need a visa from Cairo – all we need is an order by an Israeli commander on the ground.

The third perception is that the Strip can be disconnected from the West Bank. Wrong: Hamas and Islamic Jihad responded with Qassam fire to Israeli military operations in the West Bank, and the Hamas-Fatah confrontation is shifting to Judea and Samaria. Fatah support in Gaza cannot be totally erased, and in the West Bank too Hamas has a significant hold.

The social differences between most Gaza residents and most West Bank residents don't make them two separate people, just like social gaps in Israel between the "Russians" and the "Moroccans" do not tear apart Israelis into two separate people.

The fourth perception proven false is that Israel should and can prevent the existence of a central Palestinian government. At the beginning of the Intifada, Israeli deliberately targeted the Palestinian Authority government because it viewed it as terror-sponsoring. Another consideration that guided Israel: If a strong Palestinian Authority would be able to suppress terror groups and present Israel with a diplomatic challenge, it would enjoy broad international support. Israel would then have to pursue an agreement and pay the price it refuses to pay.

Chaos refused to cooperate
The solution came in the form of controlled chaos, where Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammad Dahlan played key roles – the former was an Israeli and American asset in the form of a weak leader that allows the chaos, while the latter served as the operational arm of the Palestinian president that enabled Fatah to enforce its limited authority and contributed to the chaos.

Of course, Hamas also contributed its share through the battles with Fatah and the flawed manner in which it conducted itself since the elections. Hence, Hamas also served the Israeli-American strategy, which asserted that through controlled chaos it would be possible to contain the Palestinian territories over time without engaging in diplomatic negotiations on a final-status agreement. The American Administration, along with Israel, led the international boycott on Hamas and prevented any diplomatic breakthrough. Washington and Jerusalem were convinced they found the magic formula that weakens Hamas, grants Fatah certain power, prevents the emergence of a central Palestinian government, and allows Israel to undertake a series of unilateral moves in the Territories.

Israel and the US faced tactical disagreements with regards to how far they can go in one direction or another – yet they agreed on the strategy. Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip makes it clear how short-term this strategy was. The chaos refused to cooperate over time – and the monster turned on its creator.

Now, Washington and Jerusalem need to change the strategy that has been guiding them for about seven years now. However, the reactions we see from both of them do not show that they learned the lesson of strategic failures.

Dr. Klein is one of the initiators of the Geneva Accord

----------------------------------------------------------
The main failure is that despite numerous UN resolutions clearly stating that Israel should leave the occupied lands of the Palestinians (West Bank & Gazza), Syrians (Golan Heights) as well as Lebanese lands (Sheeba Farms) - no one has pressured Israel to leave these terrorities - this it is not interest (particulary the US). Lets face the facts - Israel created the current sitiation by pumping money and encouraging the growth of Hamas for this situation to arise - a split in the West Bank and Gazza. Now that Hamas is here, the Palestinians and the rest of the world is being tricked by Israel for defending their stance that they cannot talk peace with the enemes that threaten to kill them - yet When Yesser Arafat was in power of the PLO, there was no proper discussion of returning the occupied lands. Day after day the occupied lands are being reduced by further Israeli Settlements that should not built, road blocks & check points cause further freedom of movement for Palestinians, whilst helping Settlers become isolated from Palestinian communities in the Palestinian lands. Don't be fooled by what is happening in the occupied lands, and the pledges by Israel, USA and the EU to Fattah is all about nothing.

Which Of These Is The Greater Threat To Israel?

Taken from the Daily Mail, UK, 16th June 2007
By Peter Hitchens

Could this be the way the Middle East conflict ends, not with a mushroom cloud or a peace deal but with the slow disappearance of the Jewish state? It seems a real possibility.

Israel must cope with two far deeper dangers than Iran’s amateur atom bomb, or even unending waves of suicide bombers.

Those perils come instead from maternity wards, where Arabs are slowly winning a long-distance population race with Jews – and from Israel’s own foolishly forgotten Arab people, finally beginning to pump up their political muscle.

One sign of the way things are going is that in Israel itself – not even counting the occupied Arab zones of the West Bank and Gaza – the most popular boy’s name is now Muhammad.

There are also quite a few Vladimirs, thanks to the arrival during the last days of the Soviet Union of nearly one million not-very-Jewish Russians, with very few questions asked.

As many as 500,000 of these – experts disagree on how big the problem is – are either not Jewish at all, nothing in particular, or actively Christian.

Recently, to the annoyance of Orthodox Jews, several hundred Russian recruits to the Israeli army insisted on swearing their oath of allegiance on the Christian New Testament alone.

Russian is an unofficial third language, and there is even a Russian TV station, though (madly) there is not one for Arabs.

Abstemious, kosher-observing Israelis have had to get used to having large numbers of Slav neighbours who cannot be persuaded to give up pork sausage or vodka, or even to be discreet about guzzling them.

Russian-language bookshops have even been discovered selling neo-Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda.

The Israeli Arabs, meanwhile, have begun to ask why – if they are a fifth of the population – they must salute a wholly Jewish flag or stand to attention for a wholly Jewish national anthem, or vote for Jewish political leaders, or support an immigration policy that favours Jews and blocks the borders to Arabs.

Their leaders have issued a new manifesto demanding deep change, and wise Israelis are trying – quite possibly too late – to give it to them.

One Arab Israeli said gloomily to me that while the first and second intifadas (Arab uprisings) had been in the West Bank and Gaza, "the third intifada will be on the streets of Nazareth and Jaffa, right inside Israel itself".

If he is right, then there is no end to the misery. Israel’s Arabs are here, and not going away. If their discontent were to turn to anger, if their leaders were to urge them on the streets, there is no saying where things might end.

It is, of course, unthinkable. But then, not so long ago, the appalling violence of the Occupied Territories was also in an unknown future.

I have been coming here for more than 20 years, and the shabby, semi-socialist, idealist Israel of those days has been buried under a layer of shiny new wealth and apparent confidence in a settled future.

Motorways, mirror-glass office blocks and billionaire suburbs have made the Tel Aviv coastal strip look as complacent, secular and secure as California.

There is a great gulf between the Americanised shore-dwellers and the determined religious Jews who increasingly dominate Jerusalem, believing – with history on their side – that bad things happen to the Jewish people when they neglect their faith.

Brainy, drily witty politicians – some ex-terrorists, some war criminals, some genuine warriors – have been replaced by dud mediocrities burbling cliches and slogans and almost all under investigation for one grubby thing or another.

In the same period the unattainable fantasy of peace with the Arab world has come, proved to be a false hope, and gone. As a result a chilly cynicism has hardened the hearts of all but an unrealistic few.

The open civil war among Arabs in Gaza is an illustration of the old saying that the most savage quarrels arise over the smallest stakes.

For control of this suppurating slum, grown men murder each other for belonging to the wrong gang and throw fellow creatures to their deaths from high buildings.

Who can now seriously believe that a Palestinian state would do any good for its inhabitants, or remove a threat from Israel’s borders?

So – since things cannot continue like this for ever – what is going to give? It is 40 years since the Six-Day War squelched Arab dreams of crushing Israel by force, nearly as long since the 1973 war proved the point again.

The alternative Arab strategy, of undermining the Jewish state by riot and bomb, maddening it into stupid, self-destructive retaliation, seems to have ended too – with the incredibly costly decision to build a great barricade between Jew and Arab.

The monstrous, ugly thing curves across the rocky hills of the Holy Land, a shocking and distressing sight. I don’t dispute the argument for it. It is a rather civilised response to the repeated horrors of suicide bombing.

It simply isn’t, as its critics claim, a new Berlin Wall – that kept people in.

But, looking across it from Arab olive groves to smart Jewish suburbs, it occurs to me that this must be the greatest and most costly human barricade since the Great Wall of China, and that it will one day be a puzzling ruin, just like the Great Wall, though less picturesque.

It cannot possibly last. No country can afford to maintain such a defence for long. All its enemies need to do is wait for Israeli will to wilt and fail.

And then, in the increasingly realistic dreams of the cleverer Arabs, will come a "Joint Palestinian State" in which Jews will be a minority and the great Zionist project will be at an end.

The wall is a reminder that the Jewish State, or "the Zionist Entity", as its many enemies call it, exists in defiance of the law of gravity.

Only thanks to exceptional determination, exceptional valour, exceptional nerve, exceptional stubbornness, has Israel managed to survive at all. And now?

Thanks to exceptional ineptitude, Israel has lost, probably for ever, another even more important war, the war of the TV screen. Maybe it was lost from the start.

Nobody in Israel likes to mention the fact that this country is, in many ways, the last Western colony. As such, it came at least a century too late.

Australia and New Zealand just got away with seizing their territory from people who were there before. And America’s crushing and displacement of its native peoples is so long ago that it is now accepted as a kind of romantic legend.

But Israel’s attempt to shove the Arabs out of the way was made in the era of the United Nations, of anti-colonial campaigns, of political correctness and of 24-hour TV news and its greedy appetite for manufactured, self-indulgent pity.

And the great stage army of the good, who polish their consciences by attacking the misdeeds of others abroad, have now chosen Israel as their main hate-object.

This is not because it is specially bad in the league of wicked nations. It is because it is an easy, sensitive target – which, unlike Burma or China or Iran, freely allows journalists to operate on its territory.

A country that once lived by good public relations – plucky little Israel defies the Arab hordes – is now likely to perish thanks to bad public relations: brutal Israel persecutes the poor Palestinians.

And I think it is now possible to see how that slow death may happen. I should add at this point that what I write here does not please me.

I happen to think Israel is in many ways a noble enterprise, worth defending and supporting, and that Israel’s fashionable enemies in the West have allied themselves with some of the nastiest and most bigoted forces now loose in the world.

If the "anti-Zionists" were really concerned about the fate of the Palestinian refugees, as they claim to be, then they have utterly failed, since the refugees’ misery is greater than ever after 30 years of "solidarity".

But reason has little to do with this. In modern TV democracies, while you’re explaining, you’re losing. And Israel’s explanations are brushed aside in the self-righteousness of Western condemnation.

The wholly false idea that Israel is another South Africa, a country founded on racial bigotry, is being spread – by respectable people such as former President Jimmy Carter.

Even more insidious are the whispered insinuations that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is not much different from the Nazi treatment of the Jews.

Many people believe this stuff, perhaps tired of being guilty about the Holocaust and wanting an excuse to stop. This is not the place to argue with it, always assuming facts and logic would do any good.

I simply mention it as a reason to believe that this is a country in serious trouble, that cannot long survive as it is. First comes the demographic problem.

In the area of Israel and the Occupied Territories together, there are nearly 11million people: about 6.5million in Israel, of which 1.25million are Arabs, and almost four million in the Occupied Territories.

That means that only half of Israel’s population is Jewish. If Israel cannot find some way of making the territories independent, it will either have to rule them with the sword or grant them civil rights, losing its Jewish majority.

But even inside Israel, the non-Jews are breeding faster, so that some sensitive parts of the country may soon be as Arab as they are Jewish. Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, may have an Arab majority by 2040.

And elsewhere, too, the balance is shifting most significantly. I went to Beersheba in the south, on the edge of the Negev desert.

Here, a once-tiny population of Bedouin Arabs has grown hugely, so that Arabs are expected to be the majority in that region by 2020. And it will be an angry majority.

There I visited a Bedouin ‘unrecognised village’, a place so nasty that it is hard to believe it is in the same country as Tel Aviv.

The service entrance to Hell must be something like this. On one side the two squat chimneys of a power station poke above the sandy hills.

On the other a chemical factory exhales nameless filth into the hot sky. A few melancholy camels stand about waiting to be milked (or eaten), and flocks of sheep hunt for rare blades of grass.

The village, in reality a scattered, untidy archipelago of sordid, cramped hutments and tents, is criss-crossed by power-lines but has no mains electricity.

Water is supplied via a feeble one-inch pipe, for several hundred people.

Ibrahim al Afash, the village headman, tells me an immensely long story of injustice, unfairness and mistreatment stretching back almost 60 years, before pausing for prayers in a spartan mosque made of corrugated iron.

His complaint is made worse by the fact that the Bedouin Arabs, unlike their city-dwelling brothers, served willingly in the Israeli army. They mostly do not do so any more.

The old man, who looks strikingly like Osama Bin Laden, said: "I served in the army. They told me that if I did so I would receive all the rights given to any other Israeli.

"I did not receive a single one of those rights. My children saw this and drew their own conclusions."

Actually, while most Israelis concede that the Bedouin have been foolishly mistreated, it is not that simple. Here, unlike in any Arab country, a Bedouin gets a real vote in a contested election and has freedom of speech and thought.

A minority of Bedouins live a great deal better in ‘recognised villages’, though nothing like as many as should do.

But this is the general problem of Israeli Arabs. By Arab standards they are well off. By Israeli standards they are abominably mistreated.

Some Israeli Arabs told me in private that of course they would not want to live in an Arab country, let alone in the West Bank or Gaza.

A plan to shift the border so a group of Arab towns in central Israel could be switched to Palestinian control was rejected with haggard horror by Arab leaders in Israel.

They all ritually praise the Palestinian cause, but none wishes to live under its lawless rule. One Arab journalist told me he had been asked by friends in the West Bank if he knew how to get them Israeli passports.

Meanwhile, after years of foot-dragging, Israel has finally begun to treat at least some of its Arabs as equals.

Recently a Muslim Arab, Ra’leb Majadleh, became – as Minister of Science – the first Arab member of an Israeli government.

The Israeli flag stands in the corner of his office. He greets suggestions that there is anything strange about his appointment by retorting: "Why should it be? Does my being a member of a Jewish and Zionist party [he belongs to Labour] make me a Jew or a Zionist?" He remains an Arab and a Muslim. And, he jokes: "I pray more now than I used to before I was a Minister."

More seriously, he adds: "And I have not given up my Arabness, either." Just before we met, a Labour primary had chosen Ehud Barak as the party’s new leader – and Arab votes had been decisive in Barak’s narrow victory.

Another example of the new mood is the appointment to Israel’s diplomatic service of Rania Joubran, a 26-year-old Christian Arab, a minority of a minority.

Rania, whose father just happens to be the first Arab in the Israeli Supreme Court, is privately educated and hardly typical of the Arab masses.

The Israeli government is plainly pleased to be able to show her off, and she effortlessly fends off questions about divided loyalties, insisting her selection will serve the greater cause of peace.

I shall be surprised if she is not a full ambassador fairly soon.

But she still faces grave problems of loyalty and allegiance. She candidly admits she cannot sing, and has never learned, the national anthem, and at a recent public ceremony stood in silence as others sang it around her.

She has asked that she not be sent to Arab countries, where she would be pestered with constant questions about whether she had let down her people.

She is Israeli in a particular way. She recalls the feeling of shared danger when her brother’s home in the northern city of Haifa was within range of Hezbollah rockets (which killed several Arab Israelis) last summer.

She has already experienced the bafflement that many feel over the very existence of Arab Israelis, and of Arab Christians.

Many of her Foreign Ministry colleagues had never before met an Arab of any kind, such is the barrier between the communities.

"People ask me why I don’t wear anything on my head," she laughs, "and when I was abroad recently I was asked how I could be an Arab and a Christian, and one person wanted to know if I had any camels."

In fact, she is one of a new class of university-educated Arabs who live at ease alongside Jews, mostly in the giant, more anonymous city of Tel Aviv.

Unlike many of her schoolfellows, she has not married or had children, a huge cultural break with normal Arab tradition.

The Israeli Arab radio presenter Iman Al Kassem, much loved by Arabs inside and outside Israel for her lively and controversial broadcasts, sums up their position well:

"We are stuck in the middle. We cannot leave Israel. It is our land, and our villages are our families.

"But we are also Palestinians, separated from our relatives by the war of 1948, when Israel was set up. I know of no other country where people are in such a situation."

Iman could easily be a Jewish Israeli. She dresses in Western clothes and speaks rapid Hebrew into her mobile. But she and Rania, as they both know and admit, are not typical.

Go to the mainly Arab city of Nazareth and you will see immediately how much poorer and shabbier the streets are than in Jewish towns.

It is not, as one Arab acquaintance claimed, "like Gaza", but the average Arab child can expect a worse education, more threadbare hopes and a general attitude that he doesn’t belong.

Some have responded by abandoning Western clothes and dressing like Osama Bin Laden, while their wives increasingly adopt the headscarf and the Muslim shroud.

And here lies the danger. The Arabs, at 1.25 million, are 19 per cent of the Israeli population but have access to only seven per cent of the land.

As their population increases that means the amount of land per Arab, already small, is expected to shrink by half. Many jobs are closed to Arabs on the grounds that they have not done military service.

University entrance is generally thought to be harder for Arabs. Their schools are more crowded and less well equipped. Arabic, although an official language, has second-class status.
And while almost all Israeli Arabs speak Hebrew out of necessity, very few Israelis learn Arabic, even the basic Arabic needed for good manners.

A vision of what might have been can be found in the very basic Arab town of Sakhnin in the far north.

Turn off the smooth main road, pass neat Israeli towns and you come down a steep valley into Sakhnin which – like so many Arab places in Israel – is instantly recognisable as greyer, more untidy, more economically depressed than its Jewish neighbours, and yet also more free and more wealthy than almost any Arab town in any Arab country.

But there is nothing depressed about Mazen Ghnaim, manager of the Sons of Sakhnin football team which won the Israeli FA Cup in 2004.

Generally, I loathe football, but Mazen’s glowing enthusiasm and delight illuminate his pleasant, friendly home – decorated by the cup, which he has somehow managed to hang on to.

The victory gave Israel’s Arabs a giant, irrational moment of joy and triumph. They finally belonged, they had beaten Jewish teams at their own game on their own ground, they had a right to respect.

He looks a little like the young Egyptian President Gamal Nasser as he recalls: "The mood was indescribable. As we made our way homewards through the Arab part of Haifa, there were men and women in their 60s, dancing in the street at two o’ clock in the morning.

"Everywhere we tried to go, the roads were blocked with cheering people. When we finally got back to Sakhnin, the crowds were so dense that we had to get out of the bus and walk the last three miles home."

Mazen also saw a political message: "We are prepared to treat you as equals, if you are prepared to treat us as equals."

Many Jewish Israelis felt a similar wave of emotion, one describing it to me as "like the pride an older brother feels for a younger brother’s success". But the opportunity drained away with the euphoria, as a nation distracted by violence forgot its concerns at home, and the same old promises were broken in the same old way by the same old people.

Meanwhile, disillusionment and division grew among Israelis, with the children of several former leaders rumoured to have left for America, along with many thousands of more ordinary citizens who have given up on the Zionist dream and prefer life in the multi-cultural, post-modern West where nobody cares who is a Jew.

Here in Jerusalem, they still care like anything. And we shall have to care too, since the continued existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East is the central strategic quarrel of our time, around which the policies of the White House and of Islamic terrorism both revolve.

Largely thanks to the West’s long, slow loss of nerve, and of the Western public’s acceptance of only one side of a complicated story, it seems to me that Israel is in the process of losing that argument.

What remains to be seen is exactly how and when defeat will come, and what shape it will take.

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This is a good article as it illustrates a lot of misleading facts in it's report?

Firstly, it states that Arabs are slowly winning a long-distance population race with Jews in Israel. Well, firstly Israel is a Jewish state and before it was created by Britain, it was part of the Ottoman Empire and had Muslims and Jews living peacefully. When it became a Zionist state a lot of Muslims were forced out by the Israeli administration, generations after generation are still in Refuge camps in neighbouring countries (where they have been kept hoping to return to their homes).

Secondly the population growth figures are in fact equal. With Jews from around the world emigrating to Israel, it is in fact increasing. Jews from London, Moscow, New York can come and live in Israel, but those forced out and living, as refugees cannot come back. On a good day most of them can see their properties in neighbour Lebanon being occupied in Haifa by foreigners.

The writer states that The most popular boy’s name is now Muhammad. The name Mohammed is popular and most Muslims will have it as their first name followed by their middle name. Their middle name is the one they are most commonly known. If every Jew was called Moses or Christians named Jesus then it would give an accurate reading of statistics.

The problem is that Israel is a Jewish state where European and American Jews are first class citizens, followed by Middle Eastern/ Israeli Jews (or those that have live din the lands generation after generation), followed by Arab Christian, Followed by Druze community and then it's the Muslim community. According to the CIA world fact book, the population of Israel is 6,426,679 this includes about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem. Israel is Jewish 76.4%, Muslim 16%, Arab Christians 1.7%, other Christian 0.4%, Druze 1.6%, unspecified 3.9%. The treatment of Muslims in terms of Healthcare and Education is very bad and Jimmy Carter was right to state that Israel is another South Africa, a country founded on racial bigotry.
The writer also states that some "Israeli Arabs told me in private that of course they would not want to live in an Arab country, let alone in the West Bank or Gaza". Well Israel is the occupying force in those lands and has a responsibility to look after the citizens of the occupying lands. Israel withholds money taken from taxes, it controls the amounts of electricity and water and lets just say they are not used sparingly. So why would anyone want to move to a place of chaos and lawlessness?