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Global Research, July 29, 2007 |
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Palestinian Information Center – 2007-07-28 |
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The prime minister of the unconstitutional PA government appointed by PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and headed by Salam Fayyad has dropped the right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation out of its political platform. In spite of the continued IOF troops’ killing, wounding, and arresting of Palestinian citizens in Gaza Strip and the West Bank, member of that illegitimate government Ashraf Al-Ajrami has affirmed that the armed resistance option was deleted from Fayyad’s government’s program. “Program of the [unconstitutional] government was very clear in ending the armed resistance because it is not related to establishing the Palestinian statehood”, Ajrami alleged. Abbas had earlier issued a number of edicts outlawing the Palestinian resistance and ordering the dissolution of all armed wings of the Palestinian resistance factions, which the armed wings rejected, and drew wide popular condemnation in the Palestinian street. But Fayyad found a supporter for his “harmful” step in the person of Nemr Hammad, Abbas’s political advisor, who blessed the step, alleging, “The Palestinian resistance symbolizes an armed mess, and its is about time to stop that mess”. Fayyad’s step came at a time the IOF troops were killing and wounding tens of Palestinian citizens on daily basis and refusing to end its occupation of the Palestinian land. Immediately after it was promulgated, Fayyad’s step was widely welcomed by the Israeli occupation government that described it as “a positive step in the right direction” and harmonizes with the intensive diplomatic efforts to nudge the peace process forward. Meri Eisen, the spokeswoman of Israeli premier Ehud Olmert, opined, “We can feel new atmosphere on the ground from both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, but we still have a lot to do”. “We have to resume peace talks with the new PA government under Fayyad, especially regarding sensitive issues pertaining to the final status,” said Israeli minister and one of Olmert’s close associates Haim Ramon. He was apparently wishing to exploit the presence of Fayyad’s government to gain more concessions as far as the Palestinian legal rights are concerned. Top military brass of the IOF command and Israeli intelligence departments expressed satisfaction with Fayyad’s government’s action against the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank that, according to them, the IOF troops weren’t able to do for many years. Well-informed Palestinian sources affirmed that security coordination between the PA security apparatuses in the West Bank and Israel reached its peak after Hamas’s takeover of Gaza Strip in mid June. According to the sources, the security coordination between the PA preventive security apparatus and Israeli intelligence departments botched at least three planned armed attacks by the Islamic Jihad and Fatah fighters inside the Hebrew state. Sources close to the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, also affirmed that prior to their defeat in Gaza Strip; the PA security apparatuses foiled a plan of the Brigades to capture two IOF servicemen at the Kissufim crossing point, east of Gaza Strip, more than two months ago. |
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Abbas and West Bank government drop right of resistance from platform
July 29, 2007
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Print this articlePFLP to Abbas: Beware of the Israeli trap to divide the Palestinians
July 29, 2007|
Global Research, July 22, 2007 |
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Palestinian Information Center – 2007-07-21 |
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Jamil Mizher, the PFLP political leader in Gaza, has warned PA chief Mahmoud Abbas not to fall in the Israeli trap designed for him in a bid to shatter the Palestinian national unity, saying, “The Israelis will only offer false promises to you (Abbas)”. To substantiate his claims, Mizher cited the more than one decade of futile negotiations between the PA and Israel, in which, Israel offered only rosy promises to the PA leaders without implementing them on the ground. In this regard, Mizher urged all Palestinian resistance factions, especially Hamas and Fatah, to consolidate their ranks, and to restore national unity in confronting the malicious schemes of the “Zionist enemy”, affirming that money of the PA is for all Palestinian people and not for a Palestinian party per se. Although Mizher welcomed the release of 250 Palestinian captives, the bulk of them from the Fatah faction, including the PFLP prominent political leader Abdul Rahim Malloh, he viewed the entire deal as an attempt by Israel to deceive the world’s public opinion, and to portray itself as humanistic state releasing Palestinian prisoners, but the fact is that the IOF troops arrest more than that number every month. As of now, there are more than 11,000 Palestinian captives, including women and children among other detainees languishing in Israeli jails in very harsh conditions. The IOF troops arrest hundreds of Palestinian youths every month, making the release of the 250 captives (many of them almost finishing their jail terms) a big deception. Furthermore, Mizher rejected the PLO’s central council’s call for early PA elections, affirming that no early elections of any kind in the PA-run lands could take place without national harmony. He also warned that attempts to strangle the Palestinian national harmony will only deepen the geographical and popular rift among the Palestinian people. |
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Mikhail Gorbachev says USA makes major strategic mistakes
July 28, 2007
| Source: AP, July 27, 2007
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Friday laid the blame for the current low in Russia’s relations with the West squarely at Washington’s door, accusing the United States of making “major strategic mistakes” that had thrown the world into a period of “global disarray.”Russia has fallen out with the United States on a raft of issues, clouding relations and leading some commentators to draw parallels with the Cold War. Gorbachev expressed strong support for President Vladimir Putin’s stance on most questions, and traced the roots of the chill with the West to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which, he said, put Washington in an empire-building mood. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, “the idea of a new empire, of sole leadership, was born,” he said at a news conference. “Unilateral actions and wars followed,” he added, saying that Washington “ignored the Security Council, international law and the will of their own people.” “These are major strategic mistakes,” Gorbachev said. Gorbachev, whose liberal policies of glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – set in play democratic forces that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, echoed Putin’s frequent endorsement of a so-called “multipolar world,” or one without the perceived dominance of the United States. “No one, no single center, can today command the world. No single group of countries, like the G-8, can do it,” Gorbachev said. “There is no option other than to build a multipolar world order, no matter how complicated this is.” That, he said, would not be achieved until the Bush administration had departed. “Under the current U.S. president I don’t think we can fundamentally change the situation as it is developing now,” he said. “It is dangerous. The world is experiencing a period of growing global disarray.” The Kremlin says the Bush administration’s plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe could spark a new arms race. It has refused to back Washington’s draft Security Council resolution on Kosovo’s independence and has suspended its participation in a key treaty on arms reduction in Europe. Moscow is also in the midst of a bitter diplomatic squabble with Britain over Russia’s refusal to extradite a suspect in the polonium killing of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, which has seen a tit-fot-tat expulsion of diplomats. Addressing the diplomatic dispute with Britain, Gorbachev called for calm. “What’s done is done – we need to stop and return to a dialogue and continue developing ties,” he said. Still, he said the case was “politicized” and, therefore, “someone needs it to be so, and to spoil relations.” He said Britain “tries to be a good friend only for the United States.” While conceding that there had been some rollbacks in media freedoms under Putin, Gorbachev said his policies were in the “interests of the majority” and stressed that Russia was in a “transitional period.” With presidential elections slated for next year, speculation is rife over who will succeed Putin and what role he will play outside the Kremlin. Gorbachev pitched in: “I am sure President Putin will find his place in future life. And this place will be a serious one. It will become clear very soon,” he said. |
Thousands held in horrific conditions in Iraqi prisons
July 28, 2007War In Iraq
By: James Cogan on: 27.07.2007 [04:43 ] (113 reads)
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The Los Angeles Times on July 21 revealed some of the abuses taking place inside US-monitored, Iraqi government prisons. The article documented the plight of prisoners in a Baghdad facility, which has the Orwellian name of Forward Operating Base Justice.
The prison in the suburb of Kadhimiyah was intended to house just 300 detainees, but is currently holding close to 900. Journalists touring the facility saw as many as 500 men being held in a single hall. No attempt was being made to separate prisoners according to their alleged crime or age. Some were as young as 15. To sleep, prisoners were provided with only foam mattresses or cardboard boxes. The urinals and toilets were blocked. Prisoners were forced to defecate in a solitary shower and basin, and attempt to wash themselves under a broken water pipe.
According to US military policeman Colonel Daniel Britt, these conditions were “appalling,” but conformed to “international standards”. American personnel, who visit the prison nearly every day to advise the Iraqi jailors, turn a blind eye to systematic human right violations. An Iraqi police official told the Los Angeles Times that most of the prisoners were held for at least two months before being brought before a judge and formally charged. Under Iraqi law, they must appear before a judge with 72 hours.
Bush’s international peace conference: A conspiracy against the Palestinian people
July 28, 2007RINF.com, July 27, 2007
By Jean Shaoul
President Bush’s July 16 announcement that he will relaunch the Middle East peace process with an international conference in New York is an attempt to use the puppet regime of Mahmoud Abbas to rubber-stamp an agreement that leaves the Palestinian masses with nothing.
Washington calculates that the Arab regimes will not only endorse a settlement that traps the Palestinian people in militarised and impoverished ghettos in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but will join Egypt and Jordan in finally recognising Israel.
The heaviest price for any agreement will be paid in Gaza, where the Hamas government deposed by Abbas’s Fatah in a Western-backed constitutional coup is targeted for destruction.
The proposed conference is a unilateral assertion of US policy, which Washington announced independently of the other members of the Middle East Quartet—the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. It will be chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers
July 27, 2007AlterNet
Photo Credit: Nina Berman.
All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.”In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.
The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.
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Dozens of Afghan civilians killed in air strikes
July 27, 2007Reuters, July 27, 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two air strikes by foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, residents and a member of parliament from the region said on Friday.
One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.
Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk.
He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes.
“Yes, there was a battle … and most of those killed were from NATO bombardment,” he told Reuters.
District chief of Girishk, Manaf Khan, said more than 20 civilians were killed in NATO bombing when they were trying to flee the battle.
“The fighting was fierce between Taliban and NATO,” he told Reuters. “Civilians began to flee and 27 or 28 of them were killed while fleeing NATO bombing. I do not have information about the wounded,” he said.
A spokesman for British forces in Helmand said there was an on going operation in the province, but denied there had been any civilian casualties around Girishk.
“We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital … in relation to anything around Girishk,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.
“Because the Taliban don’t wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?”
Due to the remoteness of the region it was not immediately possible to verify the information.
Some 2,000 British and Afghan army forces have been conducting an operation in the Upper Girishk valley this week to clear Taliban insurgents from the area.
The second attack hit two houses in the Char Cheno district of neighboring Uruzgan late on Thursday afternoon and killed 15 civilians there, several villagers from the area told reporters by telephone.
Britain: Antiwar MP George Galloway suspended from parliament
July 26, 2007By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
26 July 2007
The ejection and suspension of George Galloway MP from the House of Commons on July 23 is the result of a witch-hunt aimed at intimidating and silencing all opponents of the Iraq war.
Galloway’s sole crime was to defend himself against allegations assembled by the Parliamentary Committee on Standards and Privileges, first launched in 2003, which rehash previous failed attempts to prove that the antiwar MP was in the pay of Saddam Hussein.
For more than an hour Galloway attempted to refute the committee’s charges against him, but was prevented from doing so as a result of 17 interjections by the Speaker of the House who ruled out any questioning of the political motives and legitimacy of the parliamentary equivalent of a kangaroo court.
Saudi Arabia: Two Leading Reformers Arrested
July 25, 2007Human Rights News
Authorities Should Release Activists and Peaceful Protesters
(New York, July 24, 2007) – The Saudi domestic intelligence forces arrested two of the country’s most prominent reformers, casting doubt on the government’s promises of reform, Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Abdullah al-Hamid, a lawyer, and his brother `Isa al-Hamid, were arrested on July 19, 2007, as were a group of five women who had been peacefully demonstrating for the speedy trial of their relatives, one of them a client of al-Hamid.
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It’s deeply disturbing that Saudi intelligence forces feel free to arrest a lawyer for defending his client’s rights. The security forces should be protecting people’s rights to peaceful protest, not whisking them off to jail. 
Saudi intelligence forces (mabahith) arrested Rima al-Juraish at her home in Buraida, capital of Qasim province, for having participated in a July 16 demonstration in front of the intelligence prison, where she and other women demanded that their relatives be brought to trial. The mabahith has held her husband, Muhammad al-Hamili, without charge or trial for between two and three years. When al-Hamili’s lawyer, Abdullah al-Hamid, demanded to see an arrest warrant, the mabahith also arrested him and his brother `Isa. They also arrested four other women who had demonstrated with al-Juraish: Manal al-`Umairini, Badriya al-`Umairini, Afrah al-Fuhaid, and Ashwaq al-Fuhaid.
“It’s deeply disturbing that Saudi intelligence forces feel free to arrest a lawyer for defending his client’s rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director. “The security forces should be protecting people’s rights to peaceful protest, not whisking them off to jail.”
Human Rights Watch has documented cases of detainees in mabahith detention without charge or trial in excess of three years, even though Saudi law stipulates that detainees must be brought to trial or released within six months of their arrest.
Saudi Arabia prohibits public demonstrations, although there is no explicit legal basis for such a prohibition. In August and September 2006, the mabahith twice detained Wajeha al-Huwaider for staging a one-woman demonstration for women’s rights. In October 2004, Saudi security forces detained hundreds of peaceful protestors in Riyadh, Jeddah and other cities, who demanded reform.
“Rima al-Juraish and her fellow protesters have the right to demonstrate peacefully,” Whitson said. “And their relatives in jail have the right to be charged with an offense and tried or be released.”
Abdullah al-Hamid spent 17 months in prison after he and two other reformers were arrested in March 2004 for writing a petition to then-Crown Prince Abdullah that called on the government to enact reforms with constitutionally guaranteed human rights.
A court sentenced him to seven years in prison, but Abdullah pardoned the three reformers upon acceding to the throne in August 2005. The government had also arrested their lawyer, `Abd al-Rahman al-Lahim, and supporters of the three detained reformers, including `Isa al-Hamid and Muhanna al-Falih, without charge but freed them eventually. In February 2007, Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to King Abdullah urging him to lift the arbitrary bans on foreign travel that the Ministry of Interior imposed on these peaceful reformers and their supporters after their release.
Prior to the latest arrests, the government had also imprisoned others demanding fair trials and an end to arbitrary arrests in Saudi Arabia. On February 2, the Saudi mabahith arrested another group of political and rights reformers in Jeddah, including former Judge Sulaiman al-Rashudi, who intended to sue the Ministry of Interior over its failure to charge and speedily try detainees in mabahith prisons. The government has not charged al-Rashudi and his fellow detainees who remain in mabahith detention, a relative told Human Rights Watch. Under Saudi law, it has until July 29, 2007 to do so, before it must legally release them.
Human Rights Watch called on the Saudi government to immediately release the men and women arrested in Buraida on July 19 and to release or formally charge those arrested on February 2. Furthermore, the government should ensure that law enforcement officers do not arrest persons for exercising their fundamental rights to peacefully demonstrate or express their opinion. It should also guarantee that lawyers for mabahith detainees have the opportunity to effectively challenge the lawfulness of their clients’ detention in a court of law.
Never Give A Life, or Take A Life, For A Lie
July 25, 2007CommonDreams.org, July 24, 2007
By Michael T. McPhearson & Ying Lee
There are many kinds of betrayal in human affairs. But in the affairs of state, there is no greater act of disloyalty than to send young men and women to their deaths on the basis of fraud. No soldier should ever give a life, or take a life, for a lie.
All American ranking officers and commanders take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Their oath is a solemn obligation to the American people, especially to their own troops, to abide by the law. Our men and women in uniform place great trust in their superiors. They risk their lives in the belief that they will not be used falsely, illegally, or for ill-gain.
There is no group of Americans with greater interest in the enforcement of international law than American troops themselves. Our youth pay a heavy price when their own rulers plunge them into operations beyond international law. Immediately after the Abu Ghraib scandal, the infamous, retaliatory beheadings began.
