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

To: sea_urchin who wrote (10881)	5/8/2006 2:21:57 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

> The US administration is totally committed to the service of Zionism and the furtherance of its policies. informationclearinghouse.info >> Punishing the innocent is a crime By Jimmy Carter 05/07/06 "IHT" -- -- Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life. Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel based on the international road map premises. Although Fatah party members refused to join Hamas in a coalition government, nearly 70 percent of Palestinians continue to support Fatah's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as their president. It is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections that have been monitored by us at the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people. One clear reason for the surprising Hamas victory for legislative seats was that the voters were in despair about prospects for peace. With American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor. The day after his party lost the election, Abbas told me that his own struggling government could not sustain itself financially with their daily lives and economy so severely disrupted, and access from Palestine to Israel and the outside world almost totally restricted. They were already $900 million in debt and had no way to meet the payroll for the following month. The additional restraints imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure. With all their faults, Hamas leaders have continued to honor a temporary cease-fire, or hudna, during the past 18 months, and their spokesman told me that this "can be extended for two, 10 or even 50 years if the Israelis will reciprocate." Although Hamas leaders have refused to recognize the state of Israel while their territory is being occupied, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for peace talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. He added that if these negotiations result in an agreement that can be accepted by Palestinians, then the Hamas position regarding Israel would be changed. Regardless of these intricate and long-term political interrelationships, it is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine. The Israelis are withholding approximately $55 million a month in taxes and customs duties that, without dispute, belong to the Palestinians. Although some Arab nations have allocated funds for humanitarian purposes to alleviate human suffering, the U.S. government is threatening the financial existence of any Jordanian or other bank that dares to transfer this assistance into Palestine. There is no way to predict what will happen in Palestine, but it would be a tragedy for the international community to abandon the hope that a peaceful coexistence of two states in the Holy Land is possible. Like Egypt and all other Arab nations before the Camp David Accords of 1978, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before the Oslo peace agreement of 1993, Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace. This is a matter of great concern to all of us, and the international community needs to probe for an acceptable way out of this quagmire. There is no doubt that Israelis and Palestinians both want a durable two-state solution, but depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (10881)	5/10/2006 12:10:37 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

> The US administration is totally committed to the service of Zionism and the furtherance of its policies. (2) The opinion of Charley Reese: antiwar.com >>There's no country outside of the United States* that wants a war with Iran. Iran has invaded no one and has threatened to invade no one. It is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and that treaty gives it the right to enrich uranium for its nuclear power stations. That's what Iran has done. There is not one shred of evidence that the Iranians seek to build a nuclear bomb. They say repeatedly that they have no desire to build a bomb, and we have no evidence to contradict them. However, even if they did, no nation has the right to tell them they can't. The U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel all have nuclear weapons – why not Iran? India, Pakistan, and Israel, unlike Iran, have refused to sign the nonproliferation treaty and have refused to allow international inspectors. What kind of madness is it that makes an American president believe that he has the right to dictate to the world? It is wrong that Bush is sending his flunkies around the world to cause trouble for Iran with its banking and business connections. By what right does he do this? He does it because he has the power to do it, and that is the worst possible sign of a leader – that he does something just because nobody can stop him. Justice is not on our side in this affair. Iran's internal affairs are no concern of ours. If you wish to worry about nuclear warheads, you would be better to worry about those attached to intercontinental ballistic missiles and sitting in silos in China and Russia. I would worry more about those than about those not even built yet by people who say they have no intention of building them and who for some years won't even have the capability. I wonder if the president really thinks that after all his bullying, the Iranians are going to say, "OK, we won't enrich uranium." Never in a million years. What they are most likely to do is tell the United States that if their rights under the nonproliferation treaty will not be respected, then there is no point in their being a participant, and we can stick it in our ear. What will Mr. Bush do then? Go to war and wreck the world economy? I hope that then his rich friends will intervene and say, "Now, cool it, George, you're about to cost us all a lot of money." Losing money – that might dissuade him. He seems utterly indifferent to the loss of lives and moral standing.<< *Methinks he overlooked one, in fact the cause of all the mischief.