Peace and Justice Post

In diplomatic cable documenting 2009 meeting, Defense Minister Barak says Egypt, PA refuse to take over Gaza in case of Hamas defeat.

Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Nov 28, 2010

Israel tried to coordinate the Gaza war with the Palestinian Authority, classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks said on Sunday, adding that both the PA and Egypt refused to take control of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

	Ehud Barak, right, and Mahmoud Abbas speaking during the 23rd congress of the Socialist International in Greece, July 1, 2008.
	Photo by: AP

The whistle-blowing website obtained some 250,000 diplomatic cables between the U.S. and its allies, which Washington had urged the site not to publish.

In a June 2009 meeting between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and a U.S. congressional delegation, Barak claimed that the Israeli government “had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas.”

“Not surprisingly,” Barak said in the meeting, Israel “received negative answers from both.”

While similar reports of such attempts to link the PA and Egypt to Israel’s war with Hamas had already surfaced in the past, the cable released by WikiLeaks on Sunday represents the first documented proof of such a move.

In the document, Barak also expressed his feeling that “the Palestinian Authority is weak and lacks self-confidence, and that Gen. Dayton’s training helps bolster confidence.”

The meeting which the cable documents took place just days before U.S. President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, and a few weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first visit to the United States, a visit which revealed the deep differences between Obama and himself.

The cable also refers to what Barak describes as the debate within the Israeli cabinet in regards to a “development of a response to President Obama’s upcoming speech in Cairo.”

It is no secret that the US military has been launching attacks against targets inside Yemen for awhile now, but the depth of those attacks has been deliberately covered up by the US government, with the aid of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The revelation, in one of the new WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, reports that Saleh had agreed to claim that bombings against targets in the country were all Yemeni air strikes, and not American ones. This puts in question just how many of the putative Yemeni bombing strikes this year were really American ones.

Saleh was said to have expressed concerns about the number of civilians killed in the December 24 strike, which his government claimed credit for but which was carried out by the US. General Petraeus was said to have denied the reports of civilian deaths and the cable called Saleh uninformed.

Yet the Yemeni government continued to probe the attack and months after the cable they were forced to publicly apologize when it was revealed the attack had killed only two al-Qaeda members and 42 civilians.

Violence, Arrests and Fraud Allegations Widespread

(Cairo) – Elections to Egypt’s People’s Assembly on November 28, 2010, were marred by reports that opposition supporters were barred from polling stations and subjected to violence, Human Rights Watch said today. There were reports of numerous irregularities including arrests and harassment of journalists, denial of access for opposition candidate representatives to 30 polling stations visited by Human Rights Watch across the country and widespread allegations of voter fraud.

“The authorities promised that Egyptian civil society could monitor the elections without the need for international observers,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Unfortunately the repeated exclusion of opposition representatives and independent monitors from polling stations, along with reports of violence and fraud suggest that citizens were not able to partake in free elections.”

Continues >>

By David Walsh, wsws.org, 29 November 2010

The batch of 250,000 US classified documents released by WikiLeaks to several news outlets, some of whose content was made public Sunday, sheds new light on the sordid nature of American imperialist intrigue and conspiracy around the globe.

The WSWS will analyze the documents more thoroughly in a subsequent article, but “highlights” published by the Guardian and the New York Times are revealing.

The leaked material consists of classified cables from US embassies, some dispatched as recently as early 2010. The cables, most of which date from 2007-2010, contain US officials’ comments on foreign governments and leaders and speculation about the activities and maneuvers of the latter, as well as details about American foreign policy operations.

In a revelation that should surprise no one, the US State Department and American diplomacy in general turn out to be a vast nest of spies.

The Guardian explains that the WikiLeaks documents “reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Continues >>

Jack Shenker in Alexandria, The Observer, Nov 28, 2010

Egyptian protesters hold up images of Khaled Said, who was found dead in Alexandria in June after posting an internet video apparently showing illicit police activity. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

The Mahmoudia canal wends its way through some of Alexandria’s poorest quarters before eventually reaching the middle-class suburb of Somoha, where elegant blocks of flats abut the water’s edge and a rickety old footbridge connects one bank to the other.

It was here that 19-year-old Ahmed Shaaban’s body was found floating among the reeds, battered and bruised. The police say he drowned himself deliberately, though it is difficult to see how – the channel is so shallow it barely reaches one’s knees. A few days later, Shaaban’s uncle stood in front of a local journalist’s video camera and addressed Egypt‘s leader, Hosni Mubarak, directly. “You are at war with your own people,” he said softly. “Your gang is running loose killing citizens, and all you care about is the presidential chair.”

Something is rotten at the heart of Alexandria, one of the great metropolises of the ancient world and Egypt’s modern gateway to the Mediterranean. The country goes to the polls today to elect a new parliament in a ballot widely condemned by human rights groups as being blatantly rigged in favour of Mubarak’s ruling NDP party, and which has been marred by violent clashes on the street between government security services and opposition supporters.

Continues >>

Legal Discrimination  Emboldens Extremists

(New York) – Pakistan’s government should immediately introduce legislation to repeal the country’s blasphemy law and other discriminatory legislation, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also take legal action against Islamist militant groups responsible for threats and violence against minorities and other vulnerable groups, Human Rights Watch said.

While international and Pakistani human rights groups have long called for the repeal of the blasphemy law, it has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks as a consequence of a death sentence imposed on November 8, 2010, on Aasia Bibi, an illiterate farmhand from Sheikhupura district in Punjab province. She was charged under the blasphemy law after a June 2009 altercation with fellow farm workers who refused to drink water she had touched, contending it was unclean because she was a Christian. She is the first woman in Pakistan’s history to be sentenced to death for blasphemy, though others have been charged and given lesser sentences.

Continues >>

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe speaks

AlJazeera.net, November 27, 2010

The Israeli historian talks about the possibility of a one-state solution in the Middle East peace process. Plus, Mark Regev, Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, talks about settlement building in the West Bank and the stalled Middle East peace negotiations. And actress Samantha Bond talks about playing Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films and working alongside her husband in her new play, ‘An Ideal Husband’.

Despite beatings and corruption, Ayman Nour still hopes for change. Ahead of new polls, our man meets him

Robert Fisk, The Independent, Nov 25, 2010