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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (6783)	1/18/2005 8:41:25 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Respond to of 22250

IRAN on GUARD Palestinian Civil War Looms MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 18 January: In Palestine the Israelis -- with still increasing American help and support and having successfully assassinated the senior credible leaders including Ahmed Yassin and Yasser Arafat -- are now quite literally forcing Abu Mazen to end the Intifada and acquiesce to Israeli dictate. The likely result if Abu Mazen attempts to fully comply is the Palestinian Civil War the Israelis have been manuevering for some time to bring about, regardless of all the verbal smokescreens designed to obfuscate the actual realities of the situation. 13 Palestinians killed this weekend 17 January 2005 - The Palestine Monitor: Thirteen Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip this weekend in a rash of Israeli violence, including a Palestinian mother and her son who were shot by snipers while on their roof. According to an eyewitness, Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinian homes in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Shells were fired at a family’s home, and its roof began to burn. The family and fire brigade managed to put out the fire, and then Feda Aram, 50, her husband Suleiman, 54, their son Abdullah, and other relatives went to the roof to see what damage had been done. They were surprised by a hail of Israeli sniper fire, which killed Feda and her son, severely injured Suleiman, and moderately injured other family members. These Israeli offensives come at a time when prospects for peace are hopeful but tenuous. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced on Sunday that he was authorizing his forces to hit Gaza, a mostly civilian area, “with no restrictions,” i.e. without the restraints imposed by national or international law. The Palestinian leadership has called for a halt to attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants. But government-sanctioned Israeli attacks against Palestinian non-combatants make newly-elected Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s task of negotiating with and reigning in Palestinian militants much more difficult. But in a sense Palestine is now a sideshow, for no real two-state solution is any longer possible west of the Jordan and most certainly Ariel Sharon has not spent a lifetime vanquishing and killing the Palestinians only to turn around now when he has them everywhere surrounded, cowering, and bleeding. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the new American/Israeli crusade to remake the Middle East as they want it, the whole region is in play and at stake. On one side are the forces aligned with the American Empire, technologically and militarily vastly superior to their opponents. Much of Europe and other U.S. clients in the world remain in uneasy alliance with the Americans despite stylistic and policy differences. On the other side is now an uneasy but extraordinarily determined coalition of Muslim-inspired fighters hardened by religious zeal coupled with Arab nationalists together fighting desperately to throw off the new shackles of what they see as re-imposed colonialism and imperialism -- now constantly termed 'freedom' and 'democracy' by the American President who continues to assert God choose him and guides him. The firepower plus the huge technological and financial advantage available to the Americans is far beyond anything the world has ever seen. Yet already, rather amazing to many observers, is how much opposition the 'insurgents' have been able to muster against the colonial invading armies regardless of all their disadvantages. With the Arab world still largely co-opted and in the ruling hands of American-backed 'client regimes' and CIA-taught police states, regional power has shifted to Iran whose 1979 revolution continues to shake the very foundations of Western control of the vast and rich region. While the much in the news Palestinian situation is manipulated by Washington largely for public relations reasons in coordination with the Israelis, the growing power of Iran -- in a new embryonic alliance with China as well as with Russia -- is what the U.S. and Israel have decided they must suppress and cripple one way or another. Indeed the situation with Iran is getting more and more dangerous by the week with an explosion possible now at any time. Top Iranian political and military leaders have already gone public with threats to devastatingly counter-attack against Israel or even 'pre-empt' against American troops in the region. They have vowed not to let happen to them what has been done to Iraq. Already the public threatening -- not to even mention all that is going on behind-the-scenes out of view -- is of a very unusual and extraordinarily dangerous kind. Think back just a few years now. For quite some time the U.S. insisted that the 'decision to attack' Iraq had not yet been taken. The U.S. went loudly to the Security Council with that message in 2002, then again with Colin Powell in 2003 -- though all the while preparations for invading and occupying Iraq were covertly underway. Then, shortly after the Iraq invasion began, non other than Ariel Sharon in Israel publicly and loudly proclaimed that after Iraq must soon come Iran. Whether the Iranians have sufficiently secret and hardened weapons facilities, and whether or not they have at this time sufficient deterrent weapons capabilities of the chemical and biological kind, is unknown. The betting in Washington and in Israel seems to be that now is the time to strike and take control, before they do. They may be right about that. But even so the kind of military attack that would be needed to neutralize and disarm Iran would be like none other before. And the possible tsunami-like wave of political, economic, and military ramifications that might flow from such an expansion of the American/Israeli crusade might also be like none other before; potentially sweeping the world into a real World War III if not "just" a lingering lower-grade world-wide conflagation with no end in sight. Beyond devasting more of the Middle East such a wave of aftershocks could very well further drain the U.S. of its resources, it's energies, and it's remaining credibility; and further isolate Israel until some day in the future when Arab and Muslim revenge would become possible. Bottom line: There are substantial unforseen ramifications likely to what the American Neocons and their Israeli allies have planned; far far greater and more dangerous than what has so far resulted from the Invasion of Iraq and the defeat of the Palestinians.