An intelligence report confirms Hamas' intent to exploit captured intelligence documents as reported earlier. Also, Olmert continues to act the fool by going to Egypt knowing full well Mubarak never lifted a finger to thwart Hamas and the inflow of arms and tunnel digging. (See 1 below.)
Fighting continues in Tripoli, between the Lebanese army and terrorists with casualties on both sides. Meanwhile, several Spanish troops along with other UNFIL forces, were also reported killed in Lebanon. Based on previous actions, I would look for Spain to put its tail between its legs, withdraw its forces and send them to Pamploma where they could gore defenseless bulls.
Spin,spin,spin. That's Olmert's plan to deflect attention from what all Israeli's know - That he has become boxed in by his weak friend (the U.S. president), a weaker secretary of State (Ms Rice) and his own utter incompetence. (See 2 below.)
Amazing if you add an e to spin you get spine. Politicians lacking spine resort to spin!
In our country Sen Hillary Clinton is cleverly re-making herself in order to blunt, early on, her sleeze and icy personality persona. Peggy Noonan writes about how Hillary is taking to wearing softer looking clothing, and becoming warm and fuzzy even to the point of selecting her campaign song. Talk about the "Making of The President." No one should deny the old girl is clever. If elected the nation will deserve what it gets - a calculating politician with no deep convictions but plenty of deep seated desires to exact retribution. Interestingly enough she could wind up being very tough in a use of force sense to prove that she is not weak but probably not resort to ground forces but rather air and off-shore naval strikes.
I would also expect, as her prospects brighten and Obama's fade, as they are, the markets will take a dive because her liberal tendencies will not bode well for wealth creation. It will be back to Welfare and Entitlements and expanded government.
I spoke with a physician friend this morning whose patient load consists primarily of those on Medicare and he said he no longer can break even giving flu shots and other type vaccines so he is no longer doing so. He is very discouraged about the trends in medicine, which have worsened according to him, and he is seriously thinking about quitting. He is a fabulous doctor, very caring and goes the extra mile for his patients and the politicians are driving him and many like him into retirement. But , that is what politicians do - I am from the government and I am here to help you
Then, more commentary about the Israeli government's spinelessness! The idea of fighting and winning is gone and the Israeli in the street is paying a heavy price which will only increase unless they force is a change in the attitude of their elected. But, under the Israeli electoral system it is hard to bring about change because politicians are not likely to vote to put themselves up for re-election preferring the prestige and comfort of their paid for cars and job security.(See 3 below.)
Amotz Asa-El, does a dance on Peres' head and issues some justifiable warnings in view of the new president's political and diplomatic history. (See 4 below.)
Charles Krauthammer must be an optimist because he believes Abbas has a last chance. Charles, wake up, Abbas is the walking dead! (See 5 below.)
Brackman and Romirowsky expose UNRWA and Palestinians Refugee Aid for what it is. An employment act for U.N. employees and American's are paying heavily for the cultivation and training of terrorists. (See 6 below.)
Hamas goes after the few remaining Christian institutions as well as the Christians themselves in Gaza. (See 7 and 8 below.)
Even the liberal Washington Post is getting its dander up over the administration's apeasement of N Korea. (See 9 below.)
Professor Larry Sabato, has a view of Hillary's continuing porblem - Iowa! (See 10 below.)
Dick
1)Hamas threatens suicide attack, reveals Egyptian and Palestinian intelligence knew all about arms smuggling tunnels
A week after assuming sole mastery of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is bent on further stoking military tensions ahead of the Sharm al-Sheikh conference Monday, June 25.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has invited Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the defeated Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to talk about the crisis created by the takeover which the Egyptian president angrily called “an illegal coup.”
The Islamist group is satisfied none of the four will resort to military action to upend its putsch. Cairo could have massed troops on its border with Gaza – with the silent encouragement of the US and Israel – and slapped down a 48-hour ultimatum for Hamas to hand over the usurped Palestinian ruling institutions, or else be forced out by Egyptian guns. But Hamas knows, just as Israel opted to keep its powder dry, so too has Cairo. Therefore, Hamas is pressing its advantage, taking a leaf out of Yasser Arafat’s manual whereby every diplomatic move - conference, peace effort or mediation - occasioned a campaign of terror against Israel.
More violence is therefore promised on top of Hamas’ daily Qassam missile and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians and border forces.
Fatah is now added to the list of targets, according to Hamas extremist Mahmoud a-Zahar in an interview with Der Spiegel Saturday, June 23.
Alongside the threat of violence, Hamas released Saturday a batch of documents captured in the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence archives in Gaza, which include complete maps in the hands of the Palestinian Preventive Security service and Egyptian intelligence of 22 gunrunning tunnels from Sinai to Gaza. Exes marked the points of ingress and exit under cover of buildings.
This incriminating expose attesting to the two governments’ deliberate inaction in preventing the Hamas military build-up is important on three counts:
1. Hamas is abreast of the secret information in the possession of Egyptian and Palestinian Authority intelligence, and can make the necessary adjustments for keeping the smuggling routes running.
2. Israel was talking to the wall when its ministers kept on appealing to the Mubarak government year after year to block the smuggling tunnels. It is clear Cairo never intended lifting a finger to stop the illicit weapons reaching Gaza and Hamas arsenals. Will Olmert keep up the charade at Sharm al-Sheikh?
3. Since Egyptian intelligence and Mahmoud Abbas’ security services had precise knowledge of 22 tunnels at least, how come this information was never obtained by Israeli intelligence?
2) A new agenda is needed
By Uzi Benziman
The "second Olmert government" is to be launched this week and the question is: Will the prime minister act like the platoon sergeant who tells his sweating soldiers longing for clean uniforms that today they will be changing clothes - every soldier will switch his underwear and socks with his neighbor. Or will he have a real message that will blow a fresh breeze into the limp sails of his cabinet?
There are signs that the image of a new era that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spin doctors are trying to give his upcoming cabinet changes is an empty one.
What new dawn is breaking over Israel if Roni Bar-On or Meir Sheetrit has the Finance portfolio instead of Abraham Hirchson? What new sun will rise if Ruhama Avraham Balila joins the cabinet deliberations? How will the country be saved from its troubles if Ephraim Sneh is replaced by Matan Vilnai or when Haim Ramon gets a room in the Prime Minister's Office as minister for special assignment.
The change that will be felt, for good or bad, with Ehud Barak's taking over the defense portfolio is not to be discounted. But that seems to be the extent of significant change to be expected in the cabinet's style and the atmosphere it projects. This is indeed the point: if there is change, it will take place in the cabinet's personal interactions, in its climate of etiquette, and not necessarily in its policies.
When the office of prime minister fell to Olmert, and more so after he was elected to that post, he appeared to be someone who sincerely wanted to bring about a revolution in the country. The convergence plan he devised was not mere lip service, and his call for a change of the national agenda was not a rhetorical trick. Olmert sounded like someone who had concluded that Israel must disengage from most of the territories and focus on dealing with its domestic problems. There was no reason to doubt that he saw his task as leading Israel toward this change and that he believed he could create a situation in which Israel would indeed be a fun country to live in. The close relationships in Olmert's family, the impact the family members have on each other and the dovish opinions of some of them were circumstantial evidence that his declared direction on the Palestinian issue was no deception.
Then the Second Lebanon War reshuffled the deck. The Qassam fire from Gaza did not help Olmert move ahead with his plan to withdraw from most of the West Bank. For a year he has been almost totally invested in maneuvers to ensure his political survival, which have nothing to do with the needs of the country. His original positions have been so eroded that he has not hesitated to say that his cabinet does not necessarily need an agenda; day-to-day management is enough. The life span of the "second Olmert government" cannot be known. Ehud Barak says that within a few months, by the final Winograd report, he will press for early elections. Even if the newly elected Labor Party leader does not make good on his promise, Olmert would be mistaken to act as if he has all the time in the world. He must imbue his office with a sense of urgency and redefine his government's agenda.
This change is also essential now because the country needs a good shake-up, because the political circumstances - a government that perceives itself as embarking on a new path - make it possible; because the public longs for it, and because Olmert, who has had a hard time since he took office, might come out the better. Ariel Sharon showed leadership when he suddenly changed the national agenda with the disengagement plan; as a result he profited politically and with the public. This is the model that should guide Olmert when his government turns over a new leaf and begins its term's second year.
3)Israeli "restraint" is both strategic folly and deep source of
Strategic Folly and Shame: Personal Reflections on a Visit to Beleaguered Sderot
by David M. Weinberg
With the Hamas now fully in control of Gaza, freely running guns and
missiles through the Egyptian border (negating the need for tunnels), the
missile barrages on southern Israel can be expected to increase.
Close to six months of Israeli "restraint" in the face of these attacks is
both strategic folly of the highest order and a deep source of shame.
Folly - because Israel has allowed a city of twenty-four thousand people to
wither away and empty out under enemy fire. Shame - because Israel has left
the forlorn people of Sderot, the most destitute, downtrodden, and drained
citizens of Israel in normal times, to take the hit.
All the praise for Israeli "self-discipline" and "resilience" in the face of
the missile attacks is dangerous and unfounded blather, predicated on a lie.
The disadvantaged people of Sderot are not resilient. They're just stuck.
They have been forgotten by Israeli society; abandoned to the gangs of the
so-called Palestinian "Authority." That is an unforgivable social (as well
as a political-military) sin that should shake Israelis to the very fiber of
their souls.
I recently spent a day in Sderot, visiting families to evaluate and
catalogue their needs for the "Lev Ehad" volunteer association. While ten
Kassam missiles fell in and around Sderot last week, walking out on the
streets was not scary. The bone-chilling part was inside Sderot homes. Here,
I discovered shame and suffering that runs far deeper than the
political-security challenge coming from Gaza.
Olga (not her real name) is destitute. Her mentally-ill ex-husband left her
with enormous black-market debts, she has bouts of depression along with
heart trouble, and her daughter has chronic and severe asthma that has led
to lengthy hospitalizations. Loan sharks broke her front door two years
ago - it still doesn't close. The water and electricity have been cut off a
few times. She lost a brother to Chechen rebels back in the Commonwealth of
Independent States, where her kids would sleep under her bed during
night-time mortar attacks.
A Kassam missile landed in her daughter's Sderot schoolyard during class,
and the eight-year-old is traumatized. She won't leave her mother's side,
nor return to school. Once again, she sleeps under her mother's bed. "Just
like Chechnya," says Olga. Both mother and daughter have been diagnosed with
clinical post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Prior to the arrival
of my friend Dr. Mordechai and I, no one from central Israel or from the
Jewish Diaspora had spoken to them.
Similar stories repeated themselves in other homes. Rachamim has a
disability that prevents him from working, but his understanding of the
situation is keen. "We are imprisoned at home by fear of the missiles," he
says. "It's like having a guy coming at you from behind with a knife," he
explains. "You're constantly looking over your shoulder." His wife will not
let the kids walk to school, and Rachamim's social worker won't travel from
Beersheba to Sderot in order to treat him.
And so, Sderot is tragedy upon tragedy. The rockets of Hamas are a layer of
misery piled atop the misfortune and deprivation that already was the lot of
many residents. They are truly the forgotten people of Israel - now more
than ever.
Echoes of Amalek reverberate in me as I drive back to civilized, privileged,
central Israel: "(He) smote the hindmost of you, all that were feeble in
your rear, the faint and weary" (Deuteronomy 25:18). And I wonder: where is
our shame?
The ugly truth is that Israel is not mobilized to really defend or
significantly assist Sderot - because its residents are third-class Israelis
at best.
Had it been the upwardly-mobile, well-connected people of Ramat Hasharon,
Kochav Yair or Tel Aviv that had been targeted by Hamas for months of
unremitting bombardment - would Israel be doing so little? IDF tanks would
be rolling into Riyadh if necessary to halt the bombing; and every
government ministry, corporation, postal clerk, human rights, gay rights,
and animal rights organization would be marshaled to lend a helping hand to
the distressed people of Herzliya or Caesarea.
Fortunately, Israel's naked shame is being covered-up by the dozens of
idealistic youth from across the country, now volunteering in Sderot. The
day after receiving my visit report, they went to fix Olga's front door and
do schoolwork with her daughter. They also brought candies and chocolate,
along with medication for Olga from a non-profit dispensary. The electricity
bill was paid. They drove Rachamim's frightened teenager to and from school.
In the evening - in fact, every evening - they march through the city
streets, singing and dancing; spreading cheer and dispelling fear.
Sderot is Israel's frontline, socially as well as geo-politically. Its
neglect is a metaphor for the ebbing away of a caring Jewish-Zionist
society, and a symbol of the recklessness that passes for Israeli security
policy. It's time to take up arms, first and foremost, against our
indifference to Sderot's anguish. Then we can turn our attention to the
battle against Sderot's foreign foes.
4) Middle Israel: Open letter to President-elect Shimon Peres
By AMOTZ ASA-EL
Dear Mr. President-elect. One wonders what makes you happier these days: having finally won an election, or the hope that Middle Israelis will no longer have your unique crossbreed of Machiavelli, Sisyphus and Don Quixote to kick around.
True, it may not have been for the premiership, which you lost five times, nor for Labor's leadership, which you lost four times, just an election for the seemingly powerless presidency, which you had lost merely one time, yet the fact is you won. And since your defiance of biology is second only to Rip Van-Winkle's, just like the intrigues that have checkered your career were second only to Rasputin's, you must now be hoping for one last act of defiance, this time of diplomatic gravity, a defiance that will put to shame Churchill, Metternich and Kissinger put together.
Well, hold your horses.
Yes, you're a biological wonder. Where are Guy Mollet, with whom you gave Israel its first foreign ally; Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom you released Soviet Jewry; or John Paul II, with whom you mended Catholic-Jewish walls? Heck, even Fidel Castro - who is three years your junior and was still in exile when you cooked a war that involved two superpowers and enraged two others - is already half dead.
Yes, your half-century in the Knesset is one of the longest legislative careers ever, anywhere, and your four great-grandchildren will be a rarity among heads of state, not to mention your marriage to the same woman for the past 64 years. And yes, unlike others who have collected titles over the decades - scholars are at a loss to recall anyone who has been president, prime minister and opposition leader, as well as defense, foreign, finance, transportation and posts minister - you actually did things.
You won a place in history already in the 50s, when you built our military and aerospace industries and conceived our nuclear program. In the 70s you rehabilitated the beleaguered IDF, in the 80s you led us out of the worst economic crisis in our history and in the 90s you inspired the New Middle East vision.
Yet you also earned enemies.
GOLDA MEIR, the foreign minister you ignored while waltzing with France, was the first. Eshkol, on whom you imposed Moshe Dayan on the eve of the Six Day War, was the second. Rabin was the third. We haven't forgotten - as you have in your autobiography - the role you played in settling Samaria as a way to spite Yitzhak Rabin. We also didn't forget how your plausible idea of ceding the West Bank to Jordan ended up in history's dustbin because you promoted it in disregard of your own prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir, whom you wanted unseated no less, maybe more, than you wanted peace.
It would be nice to let bygones be bygones now, but Middle Israelis can't help fearing that your past as an insubordinate visionary may soon bring with it, yet again, more curse than blessing. Forgive us for suspecting you already are planning a de ja vu all over again, maybe a conference with Bashar - "It had to be president-to-president," your aides will explain - or a visit to the Arab League's Cairo headquarters alongside Amr Moussa, or a royal tour of Saudi Arabia, or an initiative for a pan-Mideastern stock exchange in Beirut. Who knows?
We therefore beg you to consider the following as you twiddle your thumbs next month staring for the first time at the neatly piled letterheads on your new desk, bearing the Jewish state's insignia.
JUST LIKE some things you did nurtured our survival here, others threatened it.
The Jordanian vision you preached in the 80s was sound, and it's a great shame Shamir and the people around him, including Ehud Olmert, stabbed it in its infancy. Yet that did not justify your subsequent compromising of your own original insistence that land be ceded only to an existing and reliable government.
Middle Israelis, who originally backed your Oslo initiative, have since learned that peace can only be made with the truly repented. Striking fake deals with assorted impersonators, opportunists and double-talkers not only does not bring peace - it can destroy us. You, however, still refuse to declare Oslo a failure, one that killed thousands, disillusioned millions, cost billions and gave peace the bad name it now has here.
In this, Mr. President-elect, there is a yawning gap between you and us, even though we are all happy to finally see you bask in victory while your biggest humiliators, Moshe Katsav and Amir Peretz, shrink back to their natural sizes.
THE BEAUTY of your situation is that you no longer owe anyone anything, and you have seven years in which to do things that, if only properly chosen, will make your presidency worth everyone's while.
Should you promote peace? Of course, provided it generates peace and not what our enemies will misinterpret as weakness and design as traps. Should you do this behind the elected prime minister's back, as you have in the past, and as this particular government's limited gravitas so temptingly begs?
Don't be tempted, Mr. Peres. Great calamities might arise from this, as they already have, and there are better things you can do from the place where you have arrived.
You can, for instance, lead the war on the new anti-Semitism. You can demand to address those British academics who are trying to do to us what the medieval Church did to our ancestors. Go there and give them a piece of your mind; they will be shamed and Jewish history will be grateful.
You can also pick up from where Ben-Gurion left off, and inspire a political reform of the sort he championed, one that will supply us with more leaders like you, and fewer like your predecessor. You can also help de-radicalize Arab-Jewish relations within Israel. You can help the Left and the settlers treat each other with a little more respect, and you can encourage a better dialogue between ultra-Orthodoxy and Zionism.
You cannot, however, change the Middle East; no non-Muslim can, not at this stage of its development, whether by deploying soldiers, diplomats or entrepreneurs.
Yes, change will arrive here, it has to, just like it did in Eastern Europe, but it will only come when the Arabs crave it themselves - genuinely, organically and enthusiastically. Until then, Mr. President-elect, we must remain on the defensive and humbly concede that there are some very big forces at play here, forces that must be allowed to run their course, forces arguably as big as superpowers - forces even bigger than Shimon Peres's career.
5) Last chance for Abbas
By Charles Krauthammer
EDITOR'S NOTE: There is no sovereign state of "Palestine". The author, for reasons known only to him, has chosen to call territory won by Israel in a defensive war with this name.
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel. The fall of Gaza is particularly terrifying to Egypt because Hamas is so closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the chief Islamist threat to the secular-nationalist regime that has ruled Egypt since the revolution of 1952. Which is why Egypt has just invited Israeli, Jordanian and moderate Palestinian leaders to a summit next week — pointedly excluding and isolating Hamas.
The splitting of Palestine into two entities is nonetheless clarifying. Since Hamas won the parliamentary elections of January 2006, we've had to deal with the fiction of a supposedly unified Palestine ruled by an avowedly "unity" government of Fatah and Hamas. Now the muddle has undergone political hydrolysis, separating out the relatively pure elements: a Hamas-ruled Gaza and Fatah-ruled (for now) West Bank.
The policy implications are obvious. There is nothing to do with the self-proclaimed radical Islamist entity that is Gaza but to isolate it. No recognition, no aid (except humanitarian necessities through the United Nations), no diplomatic commerce.
Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages. Israel failed to do that after it evacuated Gaza in 2005, permitting the development of an unprecedented parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity and gasoline to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it.
With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will tolerate no more rocket fire — that the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around missiles and launchers.
If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country on Earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack it?
Regarding the West Bank, policy should be equally clear. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas represents moderation and should be helped as he tries to demonstrate both authority and success in running his part of Palestine.
But let's remember who Abbas is. He appears well intentioned, but he is afflicted with near-disastrous weaknesses. He controls little. His troops in Gaza simply collapsed against the greatly outnumbered forces of Hamas. His authority in the West Bank is far from universal. He does not even control the various factions within Fatah.
But the greater liability is his character. He is weak and indecisive. When he was Yasser Arafat's deputy, Abbas was known to respond to being slapped down by his boss by simply disappearing for weeks in a sulk. During the battle for Gaza, he did not order his Fatah forces to return fire against the Hamas insurrection until the fight was essentially over. Remember, too, that after Arafat's death Abbas ran the Palestinian Authority without a Hamas presence for more than a year. Can you name a single thing he achieved in that time?
Moreover, his Fatah party is ideologically spent and widely discredited. Historian Michael Oren points out that the Palestinian Authority has received more per capita aid than did Europe under the Marshall Plan. This astonishing largess has disappeared into lavish villas for party bosses and guns for the multiple militias Arafat established.
The West is rushing to bolster Abbas. Israel will release hundreds of millions in tax revenue. The United States and the European Union will be pouring in aid. All praise Abbas as a cross between Anwar Sadat and Simón Bolívar. Fine. We have no choice but to support him. But before we give him the moon, we should insist upon reasonable benchmarks of both moderation and good governance — exactly what we failed to do during the Oslo process. Abbas needs to demonstrate his ability to run a clean administration and to engage Israel in day-to-day negotiations to alleviate the conditions of life on the ground.
Abbas is not Hamas. But despite the geographical advantages, he does not represent the second coming, either. We can prop him up only so much. In the end, the only one who can make a success of the West Bank is Abbas himself. This is his chance. His last chance.
6) Dubious refugee relief:
by Nicole Brackman and Asaf Romirowsky
Recent violent events in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, as well as the internecine Palestinian fighting raging in Gaza, are a stark reminder of the inherent instability of the current Palestinian political culture and the rise of extremism within the population.
Along with the explosion in Lebanon, there have been weeks of street fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah activists. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for resumed negotiations with Israel while Hamas has rejected this possibility. The inter-Palestinian violence also heralded a new barrage of Kassem rockets launched at Israel — more than 150 in the past weeks.
In Lebanon, it seems the refugee camps have been effectively taken over by a new al Qaeda-linked terrorist faction called Fatah al-Islam. Long an epicenter of factional extremism in Lebanon, the Palestinian camps are a hotbed for breeding and exporting terrorist activists. One common denominator between the refugee crisis in Lebanon and the violence in Gaza is the involvement of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Founded in 1949 after the passage of U.N. Resolution 194, the organization was to take over immediate relief and more long-term work projects designed to make the refugee communities self-sufficient, pending a political settlement.
This group is a unique body that has no other parallel in the U.N. system. Millions of refugees worldwide fall under the responsibility of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which aims to resettle and rehabilitate the refugees. But the relief group was created as a separate body whose jurisdiction is solely the Palestinians. UNRWA defines the term "refugee" in the broadest terms by including not only those Arabs who fled from territories held by Israel, but also those who stayed in their homes and lost their source of livelihood as a result of war. Today, this would include all third- and fourth-generation children of refugees, even those of just one Palestinian refugee parent.
Historically, UNRWA is the main vehicle for the perpetuation of the focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the United Nations. In contradistinction to the human-rights group, UNRWA is an apparatus that maintains the status quo; the office has no incentive to develop a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem. As one of the largest employers in the host countries that have Palestinian refugee camps, UNRWA is staffed in situ mainly by local Palestinians — more than 23,000 of them, with only about 100 international U.N. professionals. The pattern of hiring within the served population is unique in the U.N. constellation — UNHCR considers hiring agency recipients a conflict of interest. The bureaucracy has created an infrastructure of dependency whereby Palestinian refugees rely on UNRWA services (medical assistance, jobs, education) but do not plan or implement any solutions that may endanger their livelihood by rendering themselves obsolete.
UNRWA serves as a crucial tool of legitimacy for the Palestinian refugee issue — as long as the office is active, how could anyone question the Palestinian refugee problem? Thus an oxymoronic situation: Despite the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the creation in 1993 of a Palestinian Authority with jurisdiction over the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza/West Bank, UNRWA remains the key social, medical, educational and professional service provider for Palestinians living in "refugee" camps. This runs contrary to every principle of normal territorial integrity and autonomy.
UNRWA's budget has been funded by many nations, of which the United States and other Western nations have been the largest contributors. By 2000, UNRWA's budget was $365 million. UNRWA is beset by bureaucratic difficulties and has not escaped the internal conflicts that have overwhelmed the Palestinian political landscape. More disturbing are the widespread reports of terrorism emanating from UNRWA-supervised facilities — including sniper attacks from UNRWA-run schools, bomb factories in UNRWA camps, transportation of terrorists to their target zones in UNRWA ambulances — even employees directly related in terrorist attacks on civilians.
All this should bother Americans because American funding makes up more than a third of the agency's budget — so American dollars are funding terrorist activities in a fairly direct way. And now, that terrorism isn't only about fighting against Israel. The infiltration of al Qaeda into the camps in Lebanon signals that such activity is almost certainly also going on elsewhere — in southern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and in Gaza and the West Bank. Combined with the other terrorist actors seeking to foment instability and gain influence (Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, etc.) at the expense of regional stability, the prospects for the exportation of terror are most alarming.
It is therefore not surprising that the Palestinian agenda — and sympathy for the Palestinian cause — has infiltrated every aperture at Turtle Bay. It has engendered Arab and Western support for the delegitimation of Israel. Fighting the war against terror entails clamping down on those institutions that perpetuate the ideology Islamist groups spread. UNRWA and the U.N. as a whole have transformed themselves into a propaganda machine for such thinking. America as a shareholder should take a very close look at where our money is being spent. It is crucial that the United States seek a true international body that represents the entire global community and not buy into the myths groups like UNRWA try to sell us.
7) Christian monastery attacked in Gaza
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
During the recent fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah, the Christian community in Gaza was also targeted. The Palestinian paper Al-Ayyam reported that “Armed masked men… stole, destroyed and burned down a monastery and a church school in Gaza, after they bombed the main gate with RPG shells… they destroyed the main gate of the monastery with an RPG shell, and then entered the church and destroyed everything in the monastery: The crosses, the holy books, computers and photocopy machines." They appeared to be members of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, however, the Hamas has directed the blame at the Palestinian Authority police.
It should be noted that while this may have been a Hamas attack on the church, the Christian community has been suffering under Fatah rule as well. Ever since the West Bank cities were given over from Israel to the Palestinian Authority the Christian population has been living under very difficult conditions.
Palestinian writer Khaled Abu Toameh recently reported in The Jerusalem Post on the ruin of the Christian community of Bethlehem:
"The conditions of Christians in Bethlehem and its surroundings had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over [from Israel] to the PA in 1995…. 'Every day we hear of another Christian family that has immigrated to the US, Canada or Latin America… The Christians today make up less than 15 percent of the population'… "Samir Qumsiyeh [said]: "I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem."
When the West Bank was under Israeli administration the Christian population of Bethlehem was over 60%.
This attack on the Gaza church, though more aggressive than the actions in Bethlehem, seem to be part of a Palestinian pattern of marginalizing the Christian community.
The article from Al-Ayyam appears below. As the story of the Christian community in Bethlehem is important for the understanding of the Christian predicament under the Palestinian Authority, The Jerusalem Post article has likewise been reprinted below.
Al-Ayyam, June 18, 2007
Armed masked men, said to be part of Al-Qassam [Hamas] Operational Force, stole, destroyed and burned down a monastery and a church school in Gaza, after they bombed the main gate with RPG shells…
Father Manuel Muslem, the leader of the Latin community in Gaza, said that the armed men who carried all sorts of weapons, including machine guns and RPG launchers, burst in to the monastery and the Al-Wardiya Church school yesterday after they destroyed the main gate of the monastery with an RPG shell, and then entered the church and destroyed everything in the monastery: The crosses, the holy books, computers and photocopy machines… And he explained that the damage caused to the monastery, only on the inside, will require over 100,000 Jordanian Dinar to restore, all the more so the walls and the outer gates which were damaged by the shells and were entirely destroyed.
Muslem indicated that he got a phone call from President Mahmoud Abbas, who expressed his identification and his love for the people of the Christian community… similarly, President Abbas promised the church that the [Palestinian] Authority will be the faithful protector to its people, without differentiating between a Christian and a Muslim.
In a response to the blame directed at the [Hamas] Al-Qassam Brigades and the Operational Force… the spokesman of the Operational Force, Islam Shahwan, said that the events of theft, destruction and burning of some of the institutions are absolutely not part of the values and measures of our people…
[That] those who attacked the Al-Wardiya Church school wore the clothes of the Operational Force and bore symbols saying “Al-Qassam,” Shahwan explained that, concerning the Al-Qassam Brigades, since there was a agreement with them, and they completely left the street, only men of the Operational Force and of the Palestinian police stayed there. He denied [the claim] that this destructive way is the way of the Operational Force.
8) Bethlehem Christians claim persecution
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
A number of Christian families have finally decided to break their silence and talk openly about what they describe as Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in this city. The move comes as a result of increased attacks on Christians by Muslims over the past few months. The families said they wrote letters to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican, Church leaders and European governments complaining about the attacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears. According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of "intimidation" for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded "collaborators" with Israel. But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city.
"The situation is very dangerous," said Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station. "I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here. This is a very sad situation." Qumsiyeh, one of the few Christians willing to speak about the harsh conditions of their community, has been the subject of numerous death threats. His house was recently attacked with fire-bombs, but no one was hurt.
Qumsiyeh said he has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area in recent years. He said a monk was recently roughed up for trying to prevent a group of Muslim men from seizing lands owned by Christians in Beit Sahur.
Thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a "land mafia" has succeeded in laying its hands on vast areas of land belonging to Christians, he added.
Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family's six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem.
"A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land," said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.
The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. "We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land," she said, almost in tears.
"Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale."
When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns. "My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him," Georgette Lama said. "These people have no heart. We're afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking."
The Lamas have since knocked on the doors of scores of PA officials in Bethlehem seeking their intervention, but to no avail. At one stage, they sent a letter to Abbas, who promised to launch an investigation. "We heard that President Mahmoud Abbas is taking our case very seriously," said Georgette Lama. "But until now he hasn't done anything to help us get our land back. We are very concerned because we're not the only ones suffering from this phenomenon. Most Christians are afraid to speak, but I don't care because we have nothing more to lose."
The couple's Christian neighbor, Edward Salama, said the problem in the city was the absence of law and order. "We are living in a state of chaos and lawlessness," he said. "The police are afraid of the thugs who are taking our lands." Salama expressed deep concern over the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem, noting that many were leaving the country as a result of the deterioration. "When I see what's happening to Christians here, I worry a lot for our future," he said. "They are targeting Christians, because we are seen as weak."
The Lamas said they decided to go public with the hope that the international community would intervene with the PA to halt the land-grab. "We will fight and fight until we recover our land," Fuad Lama said. "We will resort to the courts and to the public opinion for help.
"Unfortunately, Christian leaders and spokesmen are afraid to talk about the problems we are facing. We know of three other Christian families - Salameh, Kawwas and Asfour - whose lands were also illegally seized by Muslims."
A Christian businessman who asked not to be identified said the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem and its surroundings had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over to the PA in 1995. "Every day we hear of another Christian family that has immigrated to the US, Canada or Latin America," he said. "The Christians today make up less than 15 percent of the population."
People are running away because the Palestinian government isn't doing anything to protect them and their property against Muslim thugs. Of course not all the Muslims are responsible, but there is a general feeling that Christians have become easy prey."
9) Still Waiting on North Korea: The Bush administration is eager to believe that Kim Jong Il will -- for the first time -- fulfill his promises.
ONE HUNDRED thirty-one days ago North Korea committed itself to shutting down the plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear reactor within 60 days, readmitting international inspectors and discussing "a list of all its nuclear programs" in exchange for 50,000 tons of fuel oil and the beginning of a normalization of relations with the United States. Since then the Bush administration has made a string of concessions to Pyongyang, most of them unmentioned in the Feb. 13 accord. The regime of Kim Jong Il has done nothing, other than skillfully extract those favors.
Friday in Pyongyang, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill predicted that the payoff for the United States and its negotiating partners was imminent. United Nations inspectors, he said, would visit the North this week, and the reactor would be shut down "the week after that, or two weeks after that." If so -- and we won't be holding our breath -- that will be good news. But the means of getting there ought to prompt more caution about a process that, even with a Yongbyon shutdown, will not have reached the point where North Korea's seriousness about denuclearization could be confirmed.
Mr. Hill's presence in Pyongyang was one of those extra concessions obtained by the North. In the past the Bush administration has resisted such one-on-one talks in favor of the six-party format; his was the first visit by a senior U.S. official in almost five years. While he was there, administration officials were anxiously awaiting confirmation of the return of $25 million in North Korean funds that had been frozen in a Macao bank because of a U.S. Treasury investigation. The United States promised a "resolution" of the investigation at the time of the Feb. 13 agreement; since then it has caved to the North's demands that it return all of the money -- not just that unconnected to criminal activities -- and transfer it through the U.S. Federal Reserve, thereby signaling Mr. Kim's restored access to the international banking system.
Though still waiting for the North's first step, Mr. Hill sounded almost euphoric on Friday. "I come away . . . buoyed by a sense that we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives, that is, complete denuclearization," he said in Seoul. As for the turning point defined by his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- North Korean action to permanently disable Yongbyon, along with a complete disclosure of its nuclear programs -- "that's a few months down the road," Mr. Hill said.
Yongbyon's dismantlement would indeed be a breakthrough. But months already have passed since the North missed the initial deadline for suspending operations at the reactor, with no consequence other than additional U.S. sweeteners. Mr. Kim seems adept at exploiting American impatience for a breakthrough. During its last weeks the Clinton administration was drawn in by North Korean hints about a deal on its missile program, and it dispatched Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang for what became a grotesque propaganda windfall for Mr. Kim. The missile deal never came close to materializing.
Given the threat posed by a loathsome dictatorship apparently armed with nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is right to explore whether Mr. Kim's promises of disarmament are serious this time. But it should stop making one-sided concessions to a regime that has, as yet, not shown it will do more than pocket them.
10) The Hillary Dilemma
By Larry Sabato
Despite the breathless media reports about every jot and tittle of the Democratic contest for President, not all that much has changed in the last year. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has consistently been the frontrunner in national surveys, sometimes by narrow spreads and frequently by sizeable margins. So far she has weathered the entry of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a far more charismatic and exciting candidate, and she has held off any sizeable gains by the other two major contenders, former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico (D-NM).
The main stumbling block for Clinton has been Iowa, where she continues to trail in the trial heats for the first caucus. But no one else is so well positioned to survive an initial defeat. Arguably, her strongest potential opponents, moderates Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) and former Governor Mark Warner (D-VA), decided against running, and the other formidable possible candidate, former Vice President Al Gore, is almost certainly not going to run. The other announced Democratic candidates show little sign of breaking out of the pack.
So it's smooth sailing for Hillary, right? No one questions her intelligence, abilities, policy aptitude, and experience (hey, this would be her third term!) And thanks to the deep unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq War, won't any Democrat be favored in 2008? How can the Democrats blow this election, with all their built-in advantages?
Well, the sailing is going to get rough, and those built-in advantages are somewhat illusory. But everything depends on whether Democrats--and the country in general--consider the big picture prior to voting in January and then November. It's anybody's guess whether they will.
The Crystal Ball is the first to admit that Clinton is a substantial, maybe heavy early favorite for the nomination. Hillary has become the "woman candidate" in a party strongly influenced by women in its voting base (if not in public office). Her first-tier opponents are also hobbled in various ways. The inexperienced Obama is a relative novice at politics, and many Democrats--including African-American Dems--are worried that America isn't "ready" for a black President. (Why America would be ready for a woman and not an African American is a mystery to the Crystal Ball.) Edwards was an unimpressive Senator and nominee for Vice President in 2004 who has been unable to shake his image as a "pretty boy." Richardson has a better resume than all his rivals put together, but this unpolished performer has been unable to break through in fundraising or the debates.
Moreover, the yearning among the public for the end of President Bush's reign is palpable, and it may simply be impossible to stop any Democratic ticket in November 2008. Put aside Democratic antipathy toward Bush; most Independents and many Republicans aren't listening to Bush anymore, and that's a big problem for him and his party. As political scientist Richard Neustadt wrote in 1960, the essential presidential power is "the power to persuade." A Chief Executive has no chance to persuade if few are paying attention. A President's party has little chance to win if the public is so soured on an administration that it seeks mainly to punish the incumbent in an election. To top it off, the GOP electorate appears deeply divided among four major candidates (Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson) and generally dissatisfied and unenthusiastic about their choices--another effect of the "Bush depression" among Republicans.
Yet Hillary Clinton has her own unique set of difficulties, and neither her party nor the general electorate has focused on them in a comprehensive way. Let's take a look:
* There is something about Hillary--the person, not the politician--that upsets and repels tens of millions of Americans. Fairly or not, she is seen as cold, calculating, and ruthless, an off-putting combination of characteristics. Is some of this sexist? Regrettably, you bet it is. We laugh whenever we hear Senator Clinton derided as overly ambitious. Which of her male rivals would not eagerly walk over both grandmothers laid end to end in order to make their way into the White House? Stomach-turning ambition is in the nature of the political beast. But with Mrs. Clinton, the public reaction is based on far more than this one quality. For example, almost every voter now has heard something about her leading role in covering up for her husband's serial infidelities over the decades. This is an unusual role for a spouse, even in the twisted world of politics. Most normal people cannot fathom it, except in the context of a supposed "corrupt bargain" between two power-hungry individuals.
* The result of the voters' harsh personal evaluation of Mrs. Clinton is obvious. In many surveys, Clinton runs 3-5 percentage points worse than the other widely known Democratic candidates, Obama and Gore, when matched up against the best-known Republican presidential candidates for November 2008. Incredibly, close to half of adult Americans already say they have an "unfavorable" opinion of her, and 43-46 percent of Americans say that they would not even consider voting for her--an extraordinarily high proportion this early in a campaign that leaves little room for error later on. Independents, moderates and swing voters are concentrated in this anti-Clinton group, not just Republicans. Again, maybe the toxic combination of Bush and Iraq will guarantee any Democrat's triumph, but should the GOP's toxicity lessen (perhaps by means of troop withdrawals by election day), Democrats will perhaps be taking an unnecessary chance of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory with Clinton as their standard-bearer.
* Compared to other candidates about whom the public knows much less, Clinton will have to live with the current public perceptions of her, for the most part. Too much water has gone under the bridge and over the dam since the Clintons burst on the national scene in 1992. Mrs. Clinton likes to say that she is the most famous person nobody knows, but in fact, most Americans think they have her number. Voters are uninformed about the details of politics and policy, but as the great political scientist V.O. Key once wrote, "Voters are not fools." The final several percent of swing voters needed to get Hillary Clinton over the top in the general election will vote for her only with the greatest reluctance, more as a way to stop a Republican than as an endorsement of her. That is a shaky way to start a Presidency.
* Let's suppose Mrs. Clinton wins in November 2008. Democrats would have to live with the consequences. There is simply no question that Senator Clinton would be the third deeply polarizing President in a row, following her husband's divisive and partially wasted tenure and George W. Bush's deeply disappointing turn at bat. We bet that she would have a short honeymoon and would be unable to convince her millions of critics and detractors that she had changed--or was different than they long ago concluded she was. At a time when the nation could use a unifier and a healer--to the extent that any President can perform those roles--partisan warfare would be at fever pitch from Day One.
* Republicans hope that Mrs. Clinton is the nominee because they believe she may be the easiest to beat. Circumstances may prove them right or wrong, but there is another reason why they should root for her. The inevitable controversies of the Presidency would erode her shaky support among swing voters faster than is usually the case. The midterm election of 2010 may not be the fiasco for Democrats that 1994 was-there were few historical parallels for Bill Clinton's electoral disaster in his first term-yet the GOP would almost certainly make a good start on the comeback trail for control of Congress, governorships, and the state legislatures (in the all-important redistricting election that will determine much of the legislative line-drawing for a full decade). Granted, it is virtually impossible to get partisans to think about their long-term interests, but in this respect, Democrats would probably pay a sizeable price throughout the 2010s for a Clinton victory in 2008.
* Democrats (and some Independents) have fallen back in love with Bill Clinton, and this has caused a case of mass amnesia about his (and her) many scandals from the 1990s. The muted reactions to the two new books on Hillary Clinton by Carl Bernstein and Jeff Gerth & Don Van Natta, Jr. suggest that voters have already absorbed the embarrassing fundamentals and factored the scandals into their fixed perceptions of the Clintons. But do leopards change their spots? Suppose the news media choose to break more recent (post-January 20, 2001) information about the former President? How much additional tolerance for a continuation of the tired Clinton soap opera is there in the American public? If this happens, Democrats will suffer--whether the revelations come before the nomination is decided or after the nominee (if Mrs. Clinton) is chosen. As First Gentleman, Bill Clinton will also be reasonably subject to the highest level of scrutiny for four or eight more years. Would the public ignore additional indiscretions as more of the same, or recoil anew and punish Democrats at the polls in future elections? One can argue this either way, though we think the latter outcome is much more likely.
Let's finish up this essay by broadening our critique, and offering a point that ought to concern all Americans. Every four years, observers pronounce the presidential contenders to be a "weak field," and that is as unfair as it is predictable.
A much more reasonable criticism is directly related to the dominating presence of Hillary Clinton in this election cycle. The population of the United States now exceeds 300 million, and the talent pool of the world's only superpower is deep and rich. How is it that the country is on the verge of filling its highest office for the sixth consecutive term from one of two families? That every President from 1989 to 2017 may be a Bush or a Clinton is a national disgrace. What has happened to the American Republic? How does it differ from a banana republic--where a couple of dominant families often run everything for generations? Have we driven the vast majority of the potentially best Presidents out of the contest because of the high personal and professional costs of running for office? Are we the voters responsible because we are too lazy to go beyond the simplistic attractions of familiarity and high name identification? Or, most disturbing of all, has our political system become ossified, so that we are too fearful of change to seek out the most outstanding leaders among us for the toughest job in the world?
We don't pretend to have the answers. But we are shocked and dismayed that more people aren't even bothering to ask the questions.
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