Het grote Israel/PA topic, deel III

[Sweet_Hadar]

Oh wat zijn ze volwassen.

Jij kickt er echt op als palastijnen in moeilijkheden zitten.

[Rabbi Daniel]

Last Update: 06/09/2003 20:23

Hamas leader Yassin lightly hurt in IAF assassination attempt

By Arnon Regular and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies



Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was
lightly wounded Saturday afternoon when an Israel
Air Force F-16 fighter jet dropped a quarter-ton
bomb on a building in Gaza City, in the northern
Gaza Strip.


According to Palestinian
sources, 15 others, among them
children, were wounded in the
air strike which came on the
same day as a decision by
European Union foreign
ministers to move to outlaw the
group's political wing.

Witnesses said that Yassin and
his aide - later identified as senior Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyah - were rushed away in a
car. The wheelchair-bound Yassin was treated
for injuries to his hand at Shifa Hospital in
Gaza City.

Several Hamas leaders were holding a meeting at
the home of senior Hamas official and Islamic
University lecturer, Dr. Marwan Abu Ras,
immediately before the strike. Among them were
high-ranking officials Mohammed Deff and Adnan
al-Rul, as well as Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the
target of an unsuccessful IAF missile strike in
June.

Abu Ras told Reuters the missile struck his home
just moments after Yassin and Haniyah left
after hearing IAF aircraft overhead. They had
been planning to sit down to lunch.

"We heard a loud noise and then everything went
black and then red before my eyes," he said,
while being treated in hospital for injuries to
his chest and leg.

Israeli security sources later confirmed that
Yassin and other senior officials in the
organization were the targets of the attack, as
they were meeting "to plan future terror
attacks against Israelis." The IDF vowed to
continue waging "relentless war against
Hamas."

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Nabil
Sha'ath slammed the IAF strike on Yassin.

In an interview to the BBC he said the
"continuation of assassinations and murders of
Palestinian leaders was shocking news... which
contributes to further escalation."

He added that, "It would be a real loss if the
road map goes away"... and that Israel and the
Palestinians "don't have any alternatives" to
the internationally-brokered peace plan.

The Jordanian government denounced the failed
attempt on Yassin, and warned Israel that the
latest incident could derail peace efforts.

"The Israeli escalation represents a serious
threat to the peace process and it is
unacceptable regardless of its motives and
reasons," Petra news agency quoted Foreign
Minister Marwan Muasher was quoted.

"The assassinations being carried out by the
Israeli government and its military machine as
well as the recurrent Israeli aggressions on
the unarmed Palestinian people are set to
derail all international peace efforts being
made with a view to re-establishing peace in
the Middle East," he added.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/337274.html

[edit: titel layout aangepast ]

[Rabbi Daniel]

PMO: Israel won't accept PA government headed by Arafat

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies


Israel will not accept a situation in which the
Palestinian Authority is again ruled by
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat or
anyone of his choosing, the Prime Minister's
Office said in a statement issued Saturday after
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas submitted
his resignation.

According to Army Radio, Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom said
that the Israeli government
will not negotiate with Arafat,
because he is "part of the
problem and not a part of the
solution."

Health Minister Dan Naveh said
that Abbas' resignation proved

that Arafat's terror regime would continue, and
urged for Israel to expel Arafat immediately.

Former Labor Party minister Yossi Beilin blamed
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for Abbas'
resignation, the Israel
Radio reported. It quoted Beilin as saying that
Sharon should have negotiated with Abbas and
enabled him to present his people with
achievements, but instead he turned Arafat into
a "hurt and vengeful animal."

Shinui MK Eliezer Sandberg said the resignation
was in effect a desperate call by Abbas for the
international community to help him get rid of
Arafat.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said his
government, which has been a major player in
trying to broker agreements among the parties,
would try to "help the Palestinian leadership
end its crisis."

"We hope that [Arafat and Abbas] get over the
crisis as quickly as possible as the situation
cannot sustain it," Maher said.

Egypt and other Arab states are expected to
discuss Abbas' resignation at an Arab League
foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Monday.

U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Tom Ridge
said the resignation would not deter American
and international efforts to get Israel and the
Palestinians back to the negotiating table, but
"unfortunately, tragically, it will delay it.

"There was great promise there, great hope
there, but [Abbas] was consistently being
undermined by elements within the Palestinian
Authority," Ridge said at a conference of
political and business leaders in Italy.
"Arafat has not been a partner in this effort,
has not provided a path to peace."

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. State Department
official said that Washington was not certain
that Abbas had resigned and that his
resignation had been accepted.

Asked about reports that Abbas had submitted his
resignation after a power struggle with Arafat
and that the PA chairman had accepted it, the
senior U.S. official replied: "We are not
certain that this is true and that this is the
end of it."

EU 'deeply worried'
EU foreign ministers, ending a two-day meeting
on Lake Garda in the Italian Alps, reacted with
dismay to Abbas' decision.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said
that the 15-nation bloc was "deeply worried by
the serious risk of dangerous instability at
the head of the Palestinian executive."

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin
said Israel and the Palestinians must remain
committed to the road map, while British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the move "a
further difficulty" for Middle East peace.

"It is a huge tragedy that the Palestinians
should be so divided," he told reporters.

Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh spoke of
"another big setback for the whole peace
process in the Middle East."

[edit: titel layout aangepast ]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/337270.html

[Rabbi Daniel]

Editorial: A government without a head


There is place for great concern in light of the
acute criticism voiced by Ephraim Halevy in this
week's Haaretz Magazine, regarding the functioning
of the prime minister and the way he makes policy
decisions. In the past year, says Halevy - who was
the confidant of six prime ministers and has just
resigned as head of the National Security Council
- there has been "an intolerable sense of
offhandedness in making fateful decisions" in the
Prime Minister's Bureau. "Things are happening
there that I can't explain," he says.

True, Halevy intimates that he
resigned against his will,
after he was put in a position
of being unable to fulfill his
duties by Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's bureau chief and close
adviser, Dov Weisglass.
However, there is no reason to
think that far-reaching
accusations on such serious

subjects are meant solely to vent personal
frustration.

Indeed, Halevy's trenchant remarks would seem to
confirm a certain feeling that prevails among
many of those who are following Sharon's
activity. The sense they have is that the prime
minister is caught inside a kind of bubble of
functional lassitude and conceptual vacuity. He
is more passive than active. Initiative and
innovation in the policy realm, even at the
tactical level, are manifestly out of the
question.

This state of affairs was seen in particular in
the short period of time during which the
cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority was in force. It seemed then that
Sharon was fulfilling his part of the agreement
almost against his will. Sharon, who once
proved that he has the ability to dismantle
settlements, displayed impotence in the face of
a handful of caravans. Israel's good-will
gestures - such as the release of prisoners -
were strictly rationed. No effort was made to
widen the window of opportunity that opened in
the region.

In the wake of the collapse of the cease-fire,
the passivity and lack of initiative that are
being projected by the Prime Minister's Bureau
have become even more pronounced. The region is
again sinking beneath a wave of violence, and
the Israeli leader is projecting only
determination to survive in office and gain
time. The government seems to have no head. The
prime minister is enshrouded in silence. There
is no sense of direction, no positing of a
goal. His supposed vision is summed up in the
hollow words "painful concessions," which
become less credible every time he utters
them.

Sharon was elected by a solid parliamentary
victory, which affords him extremely broad
political maneuverability. If he wished, he
could put forward a moderate, realistic policy
platform, which would be congruent with the
changes the region is undergoing. The
disappointment that exists here and in
Washington regarding the work of the new
Palestinian leadership does not justify lack of
initiative and lack of activity by Israel.

Halevy notes justly that "anyone with eyes in
his head understands that we will not remain in
the Gaza Strip." This being so, it might have
been possible to consider a move in Gaza that
would thaw the situation and signal that Israel
is bent on a settlement. However, for that to
happen, even to think about some sort of
movement, there has to be willingness to think
anew and formulate new solutions. Prime
Minister Sharon is blatantly not displaying any
readiness or desire for this. The country, in
its melancholy situation, does not deserve
leadership like this - leadership that is
leading nowhere.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/S...ID=0&listSrc=Y

[edit: titel lay-out aangepast. ]

[Rabbi Daniel]

The ethical side of the IDF's assassinations

By Amos Harel

In the past two weeks, the policy of assassination
has been resumed against militants and has become
the main form of action taken by the Israel
Defense Forces in its war against suicide attacks.
Six attacks in the past 15 days have claimed the
lives of 12 Hamas activists of various ranks and
have led senior General Staff officers to argue
that the method has succeeded in imposing an
effective deterrent on the Hamas leadership in the
Gaza Strip.

Senior members of the Islamic
organization are avoiding
public appearance; they do not
make televised interviews; and,
according to reports, they
travel on scooters, at times
dressed as women, in an effort
to avoid the missiles of IDF
helicopter gunships.


The emotional backlash created by the latest
suicide bombing against a bus full of children
in Jerusalem has forced the debate of morality
surrounding the use of assassinations from the
public's mind.

On the practical level, despite the fact that
Israel has employed this method for more than
two-and-a-half years - the first assassination
was carried out against Tanzim militant Hussein
Abiyat in Bethlehem in November 2000 - it has
not yet been determined that assassinations,
beyond the obvious limitations it imposes on
the operations of the groups, is effective in
limiting the motivation of young Palestinians
wishing to carry out suicide bombings.

Until recently, the army did not make any
significant effort to morally justify the use
of assassinations. When the issue was presented
to senior IDF officers, like Chief of Staff
Moshe Ya'alon and Israel Air Force chief Dan
Halutz, their responses resulted in criticism
from political circles.

Major General Amos Yadlin, in charge of the
Military Colleges, decided to address the
issue. Yadlin, former chief of the Air Force
Staff, has followed the issue closely and
published an article recently in the National
Security journal, co-authored with philosopher
Professor Asa Kasher. The article seeks to
detail an ethical and moral justification
behind the considerations that guide the
aggressive actions of the IDF in the
territories.

The two write that the IDF has two moral
obligations - to prevent attacks that may kill
Israeli civilians, and to prevent harming
innocent Palestinians who may be found near the
target. The authors note that the
considerations are evaluated in detail in every
case involving a target, within the parameters
of these moral obligations.

"The intelligence information the
decision-makers have is the best that can be
collected," they write, adding that it provides
data on the presence of innocent civilians
nearby, and that efforts are made to employ a
method that will avoid innocent casualties.

The authors also address the issue of "marking"
the terrorists. They maintain that those
targeted are "ticking bombs;" i.e. they are on
the verge of initiating an attack and the IDF
has no other option of preventing them from
carrying it out.

"A person is a ticking bomb not only when he has
a belt of explosives strapped to him and is on
his way into Israel... but also in earlier
stages - when the person provides his colleague
with war materiel, when he prepares his
equipment and the journey, and when he plans
the attack," they write.

Targetting such individuals is justified, they
argue, in view of the absence of any other
practical means to stop them.

Yadlin and Kasher note that assassinations are
not an act of vengeance or punishment. On the
other hand, the planner of attacks could be a
target on the basis of the argument that the
person who has done something repeatedly as a
member of a terrorist group will do the same in
the future.

Regarding innocent bystanders, if the action is
fully justified, as a result of the need to
provide security for civilians and soldiers,
one must come to terms with harming the "human
surroundings" of the terrorist. In other words,
the euphemism of "collateral damage" is
acceptable if the operation is justified.

The authors view last July's killing of Salah
Shehadeh that also claimed the lives of 15
civilians as a moral failure, stemming from an
intelligence failure. However, they reject the
criticism of the use of a large bomb in the
operation, saying that the need to destroy the
target would have required four smaller bombs,
thereby increasing the risk of harming the
environs of the terrorist.

The authors say that the policy of
assassinations is not a deterrent and that it
is not based on the idea that a terrorist
organization is an army whose members are all
targets. However, last week the chief of staff
declared precisely the opposite, saying that
all Hamas militants are legitimate targets for
assassination.

"Assassinations work," a senior officer argued
last week, explaining the delay in their
implementation on a massive scale "as needing
time to mature inside all of us. If you only
knew how long it took us to convince our
superiors to allow us to target Rantisi [a
senior Hamas official unsuccessfully targeted
in June]," he said.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/S...ID=0&listSrc=Y

[edit: titel layout aangepast ]

[Vage Harry]

Desecrator schreef op 06-09-2003 @ 19:39:
Jammer. Volgende keer beter

Ik ben niet zo'n mensen-dood-wenser maar mag dit dan ook voor Sharon gelden???

[little nemo]

mmm...leuke discussie hier zeg

Jezus...een stuk of tien nieuwsberichten, wat geblaat en een paar loze opmerkingen.

FA en SimShalom, gaan jullie even lekker met jullie andere jodenvriendjes naar een ander forum ofzo...

[Sweet_Hadar]

nare man schreef op 06-09-2003 @ 20:56:
Jezus...een stuk of tien nieuwsberichten, wat geblaat en een paar loze opmerkingen.

FA en SimShalom, gaan jullie even lekker met jullie andere jodenvriendjes naar een ander forum ofzo...

Een beetje anti-joods, meneer nare man? Maar ja, dat hoort hier niet want het is namelijk geen nieuws....

[Carpe Diem]

De kat krabt de krullen van de trap.

Loos topic.

[naam onbekend]

Hee, ik heb een hele tijd geleden het tweede Israël-Palestina topic al geopend hoorHet is alleen door weinig belangstelling (vakantie van o.a. FA en SimShalom) afgezakt.

Dus dit topic is eigenlijk deel III

[Gatara]

naam onbekend schreef op 06-09-2003 @ 21:36:
Hee, ik heb een hele tijd geleden het tweede Israël-Palestina topic al geopend hoorHet is alleen door weinig belangstelling (vakantie van o.a. FA en SimShalom) afgezakt.

Dus dit topic is eigenlijk deel III

Ok. Bij deze zal ik t topic veranderen.

Fleet, zou je niet zo scheutig willen zijn met het posten van nieuwsartikelen? Wordt moeilijk zo om daarop te reageren. Graag 1 voor 1 en hooguit 2.