Saturday, June 10, 2006
Middle Eastern News Roundup
There is much bad news coming from the Middle East today. Israeli artillery fire struck a beach in the Gaza Strip, killing seven people and injuring dozens of others. The Israeli government apologized and promised to look into the incident. The Israeli military was apparently trying to shell a neighborhood where rocket attacks had been coming from.
Evidently an apology was not enough for the Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, called the artillery attack a “massacre” and called on the international community to intervene. Israel also destroyed a car and three people in it earlier. Israel says the three were returning from firing a rocket into Israel, but Palestinian Security forces maintained this was not the case.
This latest round of violence began to escalate after the assassination of Abu Samhadana. Israeli Defense Forces used an air strike to kill him and three others in a “training camp for militia members” near Rafah in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Samhadana was supposed to lead a new Palestinian security force, but his appointment was blocked by Abbas.
Israel justified its attack by charging Samhadana with heading the PRC “terror organization.” The Popular Resistance Committees, or PRC, frequently use really ineffective rocket attacks to terrorize Israel, only to draw punishing return fire from the IDF.
These tensions between Israel and Palestine are concurrent with tensions between Fatah (and its leader Mahmoud Abbas) and Hamas (led by prime minister Ismail Haniya), the political party categorized as a terrorist organizations by most Western accounts. Hamas is formally dedicated to the destruction of Israel, although that may change. Read this from an interview between Ismail Haniya and an Aljazeera reporter:
Would there be peace between Israel and a prospective Palestinian state on the entirety of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem?
Yes, there can be peace, but let me ask you a question: Is Israel ready to give up all the territories occupied in 1967 even in return for full peace with the Palestinians?
Hamas’ leader seems willing to accept Israel’s existence in exchange for a return to the “Green Line” of the 1967 borders.
Fatah and Hamas have been engaging in an arms race and their members have clashed several times in the past few months. The United States has helped to get military supplies to Fatah with the help of Egypt and Jordan.
Meanwhile, Israel moves ahead with its peace plan, unilaterally building its wall across much of Palestinian land and claiming that there are no partners to negotiate with, which, as one Al-Ahram writer wrote, “…when Israel claims that there is no Palestinian partner for peace it is, in a certain sense, telling the truth. Certainly there is no Palestinian partner willing to accede to Israel's annexing of large segments of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and give up the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.”
Al-Ahram also covers a list of Iraq War incidents not investigated or even covered up by the US military.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 11:52 AM 
