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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (172447)	7/23/2003 11:09:26 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575880

Yeah, I guess I'm just too logical to be a liberal. ;-) You can say that again. He's too logical to be a liberal!

To: i-node who wrote (172447)	7/23/2003 11:43:09 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575880

<font color=orange>So much for the peace plan......they're building this fence on the green line....its a major bone of contention. To add salt to the wound, some of the settlements that were torn down are being rebuilt and now Sharon wants expansion rights for existing settlements. The Palestinians would be fools to accept this scenario. <font color=black> ********************************************************** Israel Defends Building of Fence By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 24, 2003; Page A16 U.S. officials have pressed Israel to slow the pace of construction of a fence that would separate Palestinian areas on the West Bank from Israel and Jewish settlements, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said last night. But he defended the project, saying it would help prevent terrorist attacks. "It is very important to keep building the fence," he said after meeting separately with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Palestinians charge that the route of the fence will leave them with only 45 percent of the West Bank, hemming most Palestinians into three areas. The fence, which in some areas is a concrete wall, has emerged as a new flashpoint in U.S.-Israeli relations as the Bush administration seeks to create new momentum in the stalled peace process. Another issue is Israeli reluctance to quickly release some of more than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners, a step that U.S. and Palestinian officials said would help bolster the political standing of the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas will meet with President Bush in Washington on Friday, to be followed four days later by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Shalom indicated Sharon would announce the release of about 500 more prisoners -- including some from anti-Israeli militant groups -- when he is in Washington, to show he is addressing U.S. concerns. By contrast, Shalom said U.S. officials have not engaged Israel on the difficult issue of freezing settlement activity, including what is known as natural growth, even though that is mandated in the first phase of the peace plan. While Israel has dismantled some settlement outposts, others appear to have been rebuilt or moved, infuriating Palestinians who say settlement growth is destroying the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. <font color=red>Shalom, in an interview with a small group of newspaper reporters, said citizens of settlements must be able to have children, build kindergartens and provide for new construction within existing built-up areas. Israeli officials have suggested they have reached an understanding with U.S. officials that would allow for continued settlement growth in this manner.<font color=black> But Shalom insisted Israel will dismantle every illegal settlement outpost, including new ones that have popped up. Shalom accused the Palestinians of manufacturing issues that he said were not in the U.S.-backed peace plan, known as the road map, as a way of drawing attention away from their failure to crack down on the militant groups during a temporary cease-fire. "They are running a campaign all over the world" focusing on the fence and the prisoners, Shalom said. "They don't want to take this strategic decision" to attack the militants. Palestinian officials counter that the fence and prisoner issues are referenced in the peace plan, though indirectly, and they say both issues are crucial to establishing popular support for Abbas. Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, who has been shunned by the Bush administration, is still a beloved figure in Palestinian politics. Shalom also charged that since the cease-fire went into effect June 29, Palestinian terror groups have dug more tunnels from Egypt into Gaza for weapons smuggling, manufactured more Kassim rockets and even extended the range of the rockets so they could hit Sharon's home from Gaza. Although the Israelis were reluctant to embrace the peace plan, recently they have insisted that the Palestinians live up to the opening commitments. Among Palestinian obligations is "dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure [including] confiscation of illegal weapons." Palestinians say this is all but impossible for now, given that Israel severely weakened the Palestinian security services during the crackdown in response to suicide bombings. Abbas, after meeting Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa in Cairo on Tuesday, said that "cracking down on Hamas, [Islamic] Jihad and the Palestinian organizations is not an option at all." Palestinians also note that Israel did not make much progress against militant groups when they were in control of Palestinian areas, so it is unfair to think the Palestinians could do any better with less manpower and hardware. "We will never be inside the cities of Gaza Strip; we were outside," Shalom responded. "So it was very difficult to do it. We are not saying they can have 100 percent of success in a few weeks, but we must see they are beginning to dismantle." © 2003 The Washington Post Company