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Politics : The Arab-Israeli Solution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: richard surckla who wrote (1477)	4/23/2002 5:14:16 PM
From: c.horn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2279

Awesome.. I hope they attack the UN next. We need to evict those lyin' bastards right out of New York. Fuck the UN!!!! And you too while we're at it.

To: richard surckla who wrote (1477)	4/23/2002 5:16:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2279

Weakness of power, power of weakness By Yoel Marcus HA'ARETZ Tuesday, April 23, 2002 Iyyar 11, 5762 Israel Time: 24:02 (GMT+3) Summing up Operation Defensive Shield now that it's officially over is a tough proposition. Since no clear objective was ever established, it's hard to say exactly what constitutes a victory. So we destroyed X amount of infrastructure and caught X number of wanted men. So we showed them who they were stupid enough to mess with. So we taught them a lesson. Maybe so, but is this the victory we prayed for? Fuad Ben-Eliezer says the significance of the operation is that now we know how much power the Palestinians had amassed to maim and kill. True, we have demolished infrastructure and delivered a mighty blow to their leadership and their "engineers," but the minister of defense believes we are not done with terror yet - "Infrastructure has been smashed, but the problem of suicide bombers remains. We can bask in our achievements, but the reds lights are still flashing. Their desire for revenge has not subsided, and may have grown even stronger." To put it another way, if the goal was to halt terror, and not just take revenge on the Palestinians, we have not achieved our goal. Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military operation ever launched against the Palestinian Authority, has demonstrated the weakness of Israel's power and the power of the Palestinians' weakness. Within days of entering the cities of West Bank with an oversized force of tanks, helicopters and elite combat units, the whole world rose up against us with a ferocity we didn't expect. This time we got it all - threats of economic sanctions, orders to pull back immediately, a torrent of spontaneous and organized anti-Israeli demonstrations. The public soon forgot the gruesome sights of the Seder night massacre and the other fatal attacks on Israeli citizens. All they saw was the suffering of the Palestinians. From the moment the IDF entered the refugee camps, the script was clear - Israel would be accused of a massacre (that never happened) and an international "investigation committee" would be established to prove our guilt. Because of the wreckage, the stench of death and the testimony of old people, women, and children mixing fact and fiction, but mainly because "they are weak" and "we are strong." And over all of this hovers Sharon's colossal blunder of isolating Arafat. Instead of trapping Arafat, the state has set a trap for itself, turning Arafat into the stuff of myth, a holy martyr whom the whole world defends and feels compassion for. Power of deterrence is a valuable asset as long as no one puts it to the test. In breaking that Ben-Gurionesque rule, we have shot ourselves in the foot. We have inflicted a blow on the offices of the Palestinian Authority and its terrorist capabilities, but we have not made so much as a dent in Palestinian motivation, except maybe to increase it. The main lesson to be learned from this operation is that if terror returns, which is not unlikely, a war of this size is out of the question. Because the world (which is to say, America) will not let us finish it. The international community will impose sanctions with some very sharp claws, and that includes the U.S. administration, which will never forgive us if we ruin its plans to knock off Saddam Hussein. Fortunately for Israel, the September 11 attacks on America were not linked to Israel. In time, however, with the unrest in the Arab world, Iraq's manipulations and European incitement, the blame for any further attacks on American targets may fall on us. Israel's commitment to world Jewry also obligates it to avoid strong-arm tactics that could intensify the current wave of anti-Semitism now spreading like wildfire. The Palestinians have turned their weakness into a destructive force, whereas our overuse of power has solved nothing and left the problem in our lap. The Palestinian Authority, as the initiator of terror attacks, came by Operation Defensive Shield honestly. But even the minister of defense says that terror is a pus-filled abscess that cannot be cured by military action or by building a fence to hide behind. The only solution is political. As long as Sharon chooses force, and lacks the courage to dismantle two or three isolated settlements that hang around our necks like deadweight, in order to demonstrate to ourselves and the other side that there is an alternative to violence, we have not won, and will never win. news.haaretz.co.il

To: richard surckla who wrote (1477)	4/23/2002 9:58:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2279

Annan Rejects Jenin Mission Delay The Associated Press Apr 23 2002 8:59PM UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday refused Israel's demand to delay and change a U.N. fact-finding mission to the war-ravaged Jenin refugee camp, directing its members to arrive in the Mideast by Saturday. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting after Israel sought a delay, saying it wanted more military and counter-terrorism experts added to the team and also wanted the group to investigate what it says are Palestinian terrorist activities in the camp. At the end of a nearly two-hour session, the council issued a statement saying it expects ``fast implementation'' of a resolution welcoming the fact-finding mission - and Israel's ``full cooperation'' with the secretary-general and the team. While the council was holding consultations, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry met Annan in his 38th floor office at U.N. headquarters to ask for changes in the team's composition and its scope of action, which Israel wants limited only to Jenin itself. An Israeli official in Jerusalem charged that the team was chosen by Annan without consulting Israel, as had been agreed, and the members were political, not from a military background as Israel had requested. A Western diplomat said Israel wants to negotiate terms for the team's activities in Palestinian areas, and wants one member removed, Cornelio Sommaruga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. But Annan would not discuss his choice of team members, though he did not rule out adding additional experts if necessary, a statement from the U.N. spokesman said. Finnish Prime Minister Martti Ahtisaari, the team leader, was scheduled to fly to Geneva on Tuesday night and hook up with other members there on Wednesday. He was expecting to be in the Middle East by the end of the week. Arab nations have accused Israel of massacring Palestinian civilians in the camp, but Israel says the deaths and destruction resulted from gunbattles between its soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. The fighting in Jenin was the fiercest of Israel's 3-week-old military offensive. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres gave a green light to the fact-finding mission on Friday saying the country had ``nothing to hide.'' The Security Council unanimously endorsed the mission. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government objected to Annan's appointments announced on Monday. He named Ahtisaari, Sommaruga and Sadako Ogata, the former U.N. high commissioner for refugees. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on Monday night demanded that retired U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash, who was appointed as military adviser, be made a full member of the team because of the complex security issues involved. He also asked that the U.N. team limit its mission only to Jenin. Officially, it will remain a three-member team. But Ahtisaari stressed other participants such as advisers and security personnel would bring its size to about 20. Ahtisaari told reporters on Tuesday that all members of the mission would work as a team, and Nash would play a ``crucial'' role, but as the military adviser. Neither Annan nor Ahtisaari ruled out the possibility of going outside Jenin. Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, called the Israeli decision ``blatant blackmail which will definitely undermine the integrity of the fact-finding process.'' ``We thought that the Israeli side did not have anything to hide, but obviously they do,'' he said. Al-Kidwa said he initially asked for the council meeting after explosions in the Ramallah compound where Arafat is besieged by Israeli troops and tanks, which he called ``a very dangerous development.'' The Security Council has demanded an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities in the West Bank, including Ramallah, and a cease-fire. The Israeli army said it set off controlled explosions Tuesday to blow up grenades found in Arafat's compound. But Tawfik Tirawi, head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank, accused Israel of wanting to destroy a wall between the prison inside the compound and Arafat's office so they could easily enter. Problems with the International Committee of the Red Cross - which Sommaruga headed from 1987 until 1999 - have been continual since Israel was first rejected for membership in the organization in 1949. The ICRC recognizes only the Cross and the Muslim Crescent as official emblems and will not sanction the Jewish Star of David as a symbol for relief workers. 04/23/02 20:54 EDT