Israeli 'Colonialism' in Final Throes -Egypt
Updated: Tue, Aug 14 5:33 AM EDT
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CAIRO (Reuters) - Israeli "colonialism" in the occupied Palestinian territories is in its final throes, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
Palestinians are in the 11th month of an uprising against occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed Arab East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.
"Israeli colonialism in the land of Palestine which it has occupied since 1967 is living, in my opinion, its last moments," Maher said in remarks at a seminar on Monday evening and carried by Egypt's official MENA news agency on Tuesday.
"We have seen throughout history that colonialism gets more brutal in its final hours," he added.
Since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 15 people at a Jerusalem pizza restaurant last Thursday, Israel has taken over the unofficial Palestinian headquarters in Arab East Jerusalem.
On Tuesday tanks and bulldozers thrust into the West Bank town of Jenin to destroy a police headquarters, in the deepest incursion into Palestinian territory since the uprising began. The Palestinian Authority said the operation was a "declaration of war."
"(Israel) is trying to cling onto what it can't keep, because no matter how many Palestinians it kills there will always be at least one fighting with stones, weapons and faith in his country and his right," Maher said.
The West Bank and Gaza are home to over three million Palestinians. Israel has built settlements there, which the international community regards as illegal.
http://search.excite.com/r/sr=newswires|ss=israel;http://news.excite.com/news/r/010814/05/international-mideast-egypt-colonialism-dc
-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 15, 2001
Email from "Daily Israel Crisis Update" news
Copyright, David Dolan, Fair Use for Education and Research Purposes
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From: David Dolan
Subject: CRISIS UPDATE, August 16, 2001
Date: Thursday, August 16, 2001 3:27 AM
Israeli military forces remain poised today to enter the Palestinian-
ruled town of Bethlehem and two nearby villages if shooting attacks
resume against the south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Defense
Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told Israel radio that he would not
order the massed military forces to pull back to their previous
positions until it becomes clear that frequent armed attacks upon the
southern rim of Israel's capital city from the Bethlehem area have
come to a complete end. Saying that the government is
establishing "new red lines that the Palestinians must not cross," he
confirmed media reports that an army operation would automatically
begin if Arab shooting resumes. Still, he insisted that the
government has no intention of permanently re-occupying land handed
over to Yasser Arafat's control as part of the shattered Oslo peace
accords. He said any further army operations into Palestinian-ruled
zones would only be designed to improve Israel's security situation
and end ongoing Palestinian attacks.
The decision to position Israeli forces just outside of the Bethlehem
area came after heavy Palestinian fire was directed at Gilo on
Tuesday morning. Israeli officials said the attack was at a higher
level of proficiency than ever before, indicating that professional
Arab sharpshooters had been brought into the fray. Israeli
Communications Minister Ruby Rivlin said that Egypt and the United
States had pressured Yasser Arafat to stop the attacks. He also
confirmed earlier media reports that senior government leaders have
approved a plan to order the army into all areas under Arafat's
control if Palestinian terrorist and shooting attacks continue. The
goal of such an operation would be to arrest wanted terrorist
suspects, but Israeli leaders are said to privately acknowledge that
it could end with the dismantling of Arafat's autonomy government.
The main concern is that such an operation could also spark a new
regional war.
A Jerusalem city worker was shot in the chest near the eastern
Jerusalem suburb of Ma'ale Adumim last night. The attack took place
while the 42 year old sanitation worker was sitting in his city-owned
garbage truck on a public road, waiting for a co-worker who was
buying food at a roadside store. Doctors say the Jewish victim is in
fair condition today at Jerusalem's Hadassah-Mount Scopus hospital.
Another Israeli was lightly injured last night when rocks were hurled
at his car in the nearby Arab village of Abu Dis. Two Palestinian
mortar bombs were fired this morning at the Jewish community of Morag
in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, but no Israeli casualties
were reported. Gunfire was also reported this morning in the divided
town of Hebron.
*** NOTE ***
At the request of Yasser Arafat, the United Nations Security Council
will convene on late Thursday or Friday in New York to discuss the
deteriorating security situation and the PLO demand that
foreign "peacekeeping forces" be rushed to the region. Arafat, who
has been angling to involve such a world force in his armed uprising
against Israel, said earlier this week that international troops are
needed to "protect my people from stepped up Israeli aggression." He
indicated he intends to travel to New York to address the Security
Council during the special debate. Israeli leaders see Arafat's
demand as an attempt to secure world intervention in the hopes that
such armed world forces will eventually be ordered to help the
Palestinian secure total control over the eastern half of Jerusalem,
and to help enforce the evacuation of all Jewish communities in
Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The emergency UN debate comes at
the request of around 50 Muslim countries, acting on Arafat's behalf.
The United States blocked an earlier Palestinian attempt to secure UN
backing for such an international force.
*** NOTE ***
Iraqis turned out in large numbers Wednesday afternoon to participate
in pro-Palestinian rallies sponsored by the Iraqi dictatorship.
Among the demonstrators were gun-totting members of the
supposed "seven million volunteer force" that the regime claims are
being prepared to fight in a pending jihad holy war against the
Jewish State. News reports showed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
burning Israeli and American flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans
during the demonstrations, which were ordered to take place by
dictator Saddam Hussein on Tuesday night. Extensive reports on the
rallies were broadcast on Palestinian television stations last
evening, with one Arab commentator saying they showed that the
Palestinians "are not alone in our struggle to liberate our occupied
land."
Israeli security officials have confirmed that they have tightened
security around various senior officials, including Prime Minister
Sharon and Defense Minister Ben Eliezer, following renewed threats by
anti-Israel groups to assassinate them. Meanwhile the Sharon
government is set to grow stronger today with the expected inclusion
of the five-seat Center party in the broad unity coalition. Center
party leader Dan Meridor, a former Likud party politician, will join
the inner security cabinet and be put in charge of the National
Security Council. Sharon has been eager to secure the support of the
small party in case Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and some of his
left-wing allies leave the government, as a few have threatened to
do. Analysts say the inclusion of the Center party in the coalition
will strengthen Sharon's ability to order a major army operation
against Arafat if he deems it necessary.
DAVID DOLAN. Jerusalem
Mr. Dolan's latest book, ISRAEL IN CRISIS: WHAT LIES AHEAD? along
with his end time novel, THE END OF DAYS and his first book, an
acclaimed history of Israel titled ISRAEL AT THE CROSSROADS, may be
ordered by phoning 888-890-6938 in North America, or by e mail at:
resources@yourisraelconnection.org, or by visiting his web site at
http://www.ddolan.com
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****************************************
A Fearful Potentiality -- Looking at a Possible, But Unlikely
Scenario for Mideast War
News Analysis by John K. Cooley, ABCNews.com, 17 August 2001
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/mideast010817_cooley.ht
ml
Aug. 17 Though they rarely discuss it in public, Arab and Israeli
statesmen are aware of a scenario that could turn the intensifying
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into a broader Arab-
Israeli war.
It's a scenario that has lurked since Israel's foundation in 1948,
and it was a concern for the late King Hussein of Jordan, before he
signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. It remains so for many
Palestinians, other Arabs and dovish Israelis today.
It is the idea of forced deportation early Zionist theorists and
Israeli politicians called it "transfer" of some or all of the
Arabs in pre-1967 Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank
eastward to Jordan.
This would leave Israel, theoretically, as an entirely Jewish state.
Jordan would be swamped with up to a million new Palestinian
refugees, an obvious threat to the existing parliamentary monarchy of
King Abdullah with the potential to turn Jordan into a Palestinian
state.
In the past, some of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior
advisers like the extreme rightist Herut Ihud party's tourism
minister, Rehovam Zee'vi publicly advocated "transfer" as a
solution to Palestinian question.
So did fiery Jewish extremists like the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, head
of the outlawed Kach party. However, as prime minister, Sharon has
carefully avoided mentioning it. Taking his lead, senior politicians
of his ruling Likud party coalition, as well as leading military
figures, have rarely done so either.
ExpectingTrouble From Baghdad
Several years before his death, King Hussein confided to this
reporter in a private conversation in 1991 that if Jordan were to be
faced by a new Palestinian refugee tide like those in 1948 and
1967, and forced this time by Israel's army the Jordanian armed
forces would have no choice but to resist by waging war on Israel.
This in turn, as in earlier Arab-Israel wars since 1948, could draw
an eager Iraqi regime to send its troops and tanks into Jordan.
Israel has always warned that it interprets the entry of Iraqi troops
into Jordan as an act of war, and acted accordingly.
During the 1967 war, at least one Iraqi brigade tried to engage
Israeli tank forces then knifing through Jordan's West Bank near
Nablus. But the Iraqis lacked any air cover. Israeli air power wiped
them out.
The resulting Arab defeat saw the loss of East Jerusalem and the West
Bank to Israel. Iraq also fought in Palestine in 1948 and on Syria's
Golan Heights in 1973.
In the 1991 Gulf war, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein attempted to
drive a wedge between Israel and the U.S.-led Arab coalition forces
pushing Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, by firing dozens of Scud
missiles at Israeli cities, causing destruction and casualties. At
Washington's request, Israel did not respond.
Recently, Saddam has claimed with great fanfare that he is raising,
training and equipping several Iraqi divisions, to be sent
to "liberate Jerusalem," if only his neighbors Jordan and Syria will
permit their entry. Jordan could not do so without breaking its 1994
peace treaty with Israel. Syria has no peace treaty with the Jewish
state; only a U.N.-supervised "disengagement" accord from 1975.
Plans for Ethnic Cleansing
King Abdullah and Jordan's present leadership may consider
the "transfer" war trigger as unlikely, despite the daily conflict
worsening west of the Jordan river.
However, they do fear a new refugee tide. Last May, the Interior
Ministry in Amman banned entry of certain categories of Palestinians,
even those arriving from Israel or the occupied territories who held
Jordan residence permits. About half of Jordan's over 4 million
people are now Palestinians, including those still in refugee camps.
Theodore Herzl, considered Zionism's founder, wrote in his Diaries in
1895 that jobs should be found for "penniless" Palestinians
in "transit countries" but denied jobs in the future Jewish
state. "Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor
must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly," he added.
Joseph Weitz, an early director of the Jewish National Fund, wrote in
December 1940 about "transferring the Arabs from here to neighboring
countries ...The transfer must be directed to Iraq, Syria and even to
Transjordan ... There is no other way out."
Sharons Unspoken Opinion?
According to published Israeli records, in 1964, Ariel Sharon, then
an army colonel, asked experts for a memo on "the number of buses and
military vehicles" capable of transporting "about 300,000 Arabs"
across the river to Jordan. No action followed his request, since the
incumbent government vetoed the idea.
Sharon states in his autobiography, Warrior, that in 1970 both he and
the late defense minister Moshe Dayan thought it foolish to bow to
American wishes to save King Hussein's throne, by massing Israeli
tanks to help the King's army defeat the Syrian-backed Palestinian
forces then destabilizing Jordan.
"If it had now become possible to resolve the most crucial of these
Palestinian problems, through the formal creation of a Palestinian
state in Jordan, that is the direction I believed we should move in,"
he wrote.
This idea has given rise to a favorite slogan of the Israeli extreme
Right, "Jordan is Palestine." This arouses almost as much concern in
Washington and other Western capitals as it does in Amman.
-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), August 17, 2001.