| To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2921) | 8/23/2001 1:38:10 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | Didn't you just tell Gus that Arabs had no representation inside Israel?
No. Can you read?
BTW, I'm still waiting for the full quote of Menachem Begin's opinion that Nasser didn't want war in 1967.
Let me know when you find it.
How could the Palestinians turn down Barak's "generous" offer?
<<< The resulting scenario is obvious: The settlers would continue their long history of violent attacks against Palestinians, and when the Palestinian state tried to impose law and order, the settlers would demand protection from the Israeli army, which would use the new roads to send in tanks and heavy artillery just as it has done in the past week. The Israeli roads and settlements turn the claim of offering the Palestinians 90% of the land into a cruel hoax. With the Israeli military patrolling those roads that crisscross the Palestinian state, Palestinians would face humiliating searches and would not be able to move freely. Imagine someone offering you a house in which you were going to have large rooms (90% of the space) but they were in charge of the hallways between the rooms. You would quickly realize that your freedom to be ''at home'' was remarkably compromised. For a people who have endured 33 years of military occupation, complete with a long history of documented torture, house demolitions and harassment, this doesn't sound like such a great deal. >>>
<<< As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar US-Israeli rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,telecommunications, and other services that are doled out in meager rations to the Palestinian population, who are now under virtual siege. It should be recalled that independent development was ruthlessly barred by the military regime from 1967, leaving the people in destitution and dependency, a process that has worsened considerably during the US-run "Oslo process." >>> |
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| To: Thomas M. who wrote (2922) | 8/23/2001 1:53:49 PM | | From: Nadine Carroll | | | | What you are describing was not Barak's offer. Barak's offer involved dismantling most of the settlements!
Furthermore, both Saeb Erekat and Yossi Beilin have stated publicly that the talks did not break down over settlements. The two sides had worked out an agreement on settlements.
What destroyed the talks was Arafat's blanket insistence that Israel accept the right of return of 3.7 million Palestinian refugees, not to Palestine, but to Israel, thus extinguishing it as a Jewish state. |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2914) | 8/23/2001 1:54:34 PM | | From: Yaacov | | | | Nadine, did you know that Sharia (Islamic law like cutting off a hand...) was still practiced by the Belgians on a wid scale in their African colony?""
I just heard on CNN the accusation that your King was a had intercourse with under-aged children in late 1960's! ! Gus, what is it with you Belgiums? Your anti-semites and perverts!!!! You must be terribly "sick" nation! I always wondered why Gus was such sick fellow, I guess that explains it! |
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| To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2918) | 8/23/2001 1:58:36 PM | | From: Yaacov | | | | Whatever name you give the Belgian's cruelty in the Congo, it certainly wasn't the practice of Sharia, or any other system of law for that matter. ""
All starts with morals ans scruples! When the present kind of Belgioum is now accused of being a pervert, what can we expect from a sick man like Gus? For him I have only contempt and disdain, the same feeling I have for Arafat and the rest of his gang! |
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| To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2918) | 8/24/2001 4:58:13 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | How the Middle East's "only" democracy keeps up:
Drugs trafficking arrest leads police to Israeli underworld
Investigation into lucrative global ecstasy trade claims a dramatic breakthrough
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Tuesday August 21, 2001
The Guardian
Oded Tuito was alleged to be a global pill-pusher, whose Israeli mafia group was the biggest operator in a booming international trade in the lucrative "hug drug".
Now Mr Tuito, who allegedly stamped his ecstasy pills with the Star of David and the Tweety Bird cartoon character that reminded him of his own name, is sitting in a Spanish prison.
Picked up in the eastern coastal town of Castelldefels, just outside Barcelona, his arrest has provoked a deluge of extradition requests and police inquiries from four continents.
Mr Tuito, 40, had half a dozen homes and as many aliases. In Spain he called himself Adel Tonitou and lived in a luxury Barcelona hotel. He kept his wife and family in France but travelled the world, allegedly directing his operations while on the move.
"The fact that he could be based in Spain, away from his main production and distribution bases, allowed him greater security," a Spanish police spokesman asserted yesterday.
Mr Tuito was arrested in May, but allegedly continued directing shipments from his cell in Madrid's Soto del Real prison until a global police operation against the rest of his gang began two weeks ago.
Three dozen of his alleged associates, part of an organisation that shipped several million pills a year, have been arrested since then in Spain and as far away as Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. The men police believe were his principal lieutenants, Michael Elkaiam and Simon Itach, were picked up in Barcelona.
The gang was also alleged to have trafficked in cannabis and cocaine and been linked to a group of Israeli armed robbers who targeted jewellers' shops in Barcelona, according to Spanish police.
"The profits were ploughed into Israeli real estate, being sent there from the US or Barcelona," a police spokesman said. Police forces in various parts of the world said Mr
Tuito's arrest confirmed the alleged growing global influence of Israel's loose-knit, but
expanding, crime organisations.
America's drug enforcement agency had been about to put his name on its public list of the
world's eight most wanted drug trafficking suspects.
"Historically, Tuito is the most notorious ecstasy trafficker known to law enforcement
authorities in Europe, Israel and the US, and was the most prolific ecstasy smuggler based
in Europe," a DEA spokesman claimed.
Mr Tuito has been charged in New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and is connected to
investigations in Florida, Kentucky and Delaware. He is also wanted by the Israeli courts.
Spanish police, meanwhile, are investigating allegations that he also trafficked in ecstasy
to the island of Ibiza.
The Israeli allegedly made a fortune out of exploiting the mark-up on a pill that costs
only 30p to make. "He was buying pills for 50 cents a piece in Holland and selling here for
$28 [£19]. That is quite a mark-up," a DEA agent in New York said.
Mr Tuito allegedly bought up the entire production of pills from several clandestine
laboratories in the Netherlands, which were driven overland to Spain, Belgium, France and
Germany. A variety of courier services is alleged to have been used to sneak the drugs out of
the EU. Strippers from New York and Spanish teenagers or pensioners took the drugs to
the US, Canada, Israel and Australia. Sometimes pills were packed into picture frames and
sent via ordinary international messenger services.
"There was a constant flow of ecstasy," claimed Jose Martinez, a special agent with the
DEA. "He was sending young, attractive women on European vacations. They'd go to Paris
for a few days, hang out, he'd give them money for expenses, and on the way back they
would have to bring a package." An estimated 100,000 tablets reached Los Angeles alone
each month, Mr Martinez said.
A series of police raids in the past two months have netted 340,000 pills in Spain, Israel,
the Netherlands, the US and Australia, Spanish police said. Mr Tuito's gang is alleged to
have also exported to Latin America via Panama and Asia via Thailand.
The emergence of alleged Israeli mafias as major drug traffickers comes after they spotted
the potential of what some Interpol officials now consider the world's most popular
illicit drug, with an estimated annual global consumption of more than 500m ecstasy pills.
"The Israelis moved into an empty niche. They were among the first to identify the
enormous profit potential in ecstasy," a senior Israeli police official, Yifat Steinberger,
told the Jerusalem Report magazine this week. He alleged that loose-knit and flexible
global crime groups headed by Israelis had grown on the back of contacts made in Israel's
own crime underworld and during military service in the army.
A shipment of 2.1m pills that arrived in Los Angeles from Paris earlier this year, and the
corpse of an Israeli dealer found in a car boot at Los Angeles airport, were both put down
to the Israeli mafias.
Even New York's strict Hassidic community has been affected by the ecstasy trade. A
31-year-old alleged protege of Mr Tuito, Israeli citizen Sean Erez, reportedly hired a
small group of ultra-Orthodox teenagers and 20-year-olds to work as international
couriers.
These traditionally dressed "Hassidim" were recruited on the basis that their clothes and
religious aura would make them immune to customs searches. "He changed the courier
profile 180 degrees," claimed one DEA agent who worked on Erez's case.
Police in the US believe that the new Israeli groups were beginning to forge contacts with
major Italian crime families, such as the Gambino and Giotti groups.
guardian.co.uk |
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| To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2923) | 8/24/2001 5:38:45 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Re: What destroyed the talks was Arafat's blanket insistence that Israel accept the right of return of 3.7 million Palestinian refugees, not to Palestine, but to Israel, thus extinguishing it as a Jewish state.
Although the right of return is a legitimate claim by the Palestinians, it's a fallacy to pretend that it was the cause of the wrecking... Everybody knows that the real, only deadlock in the peace negociations is the status of Jerusalem and the Jews' deadly game to keep it under 100%-Jewish control. The Israeli Jews' tactics has been to wage a war of attrition against the Palestinians' legitimate claim to rule over East Jerusalem (hence the dramatic seizure of the Orient House of late).
As regards the so-called right of return of three million Palestinians, Arafat and most of the Palestinian leaders have always hinted at the highly symbolic nature of that claim and allowed for the details of implementation to be loose enough so that, practically, it wouldn't set up a demographic imbalance in Israel.
Gus. |
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| To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2923) | 8/24/2001 6:04:44 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Follow-up to my previous post...
Negotiating Jerusalem:
Towards a Palestinian Agenda
Mick Dumper
Given the history of concessions made by the Palestinian leadership during the course of the Oslo process, most observers of the Camp David summit were surprised by the firm position taken by President Yasser Arafat over the question of Jerusalem. To a large extent the principled nature of his stand on this issue, in contrast to the obfuscation and fudging on the other Final Status issues, were the cause of the hero's welcome he received on his return to Gaza and the Arab world. Whatever other compromises had been made, on this issue Arafat had not consigned the Palestinians to be the people in Arab history who had sold out on Jerusalem.
Recognizing Palestinian Sovereignty and Accommodating Change
In the aftermath of Camp David and amid the recriminations and mutual disappointments, there is an opportunity to have a more considered look at the options available to the Palestinian leadership. First, is there sufficient room for maneuver to allow the Palestinians to re-engage realistically with the Israelis in the peace negotiations and simultaneously to retain their principled position within the Palestinian national consensus on Jerusalem? Second, but more important in terms of the long-term future of the city, how could an agenda be framed which would recognize some of the irrevocable changes that have taken place since 1967 and address the need to establish a sustainable framework which recognizes the challenges of the future? Third, United Nations Resolution 242 basically affirmed a return to the cease-fire lines of 1949 that were not the ideal division of the city by any means. Reifying those lines and divisions in a Final Status agreement would not necessarily create a harmonious environment for a modern city or serve the interests of the inhabitants of the city. A fixation on past borders will not help to consolidate a long-term agreement. Thus a realistic negotiating agenda based upon international legitimacy and a sustainable future would need not only to recognize Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the Old City but also accommodate a changed and changing situation.
A national Palestinian consensus on Jerusalem has crystallized around the following components: Jerusalem will be the capital for both Palestinian and Israeli sovereign states within the pre-1967 internationally recognized borders and will be administered by two municipal bodies, one Palestinian and the other Israeli. The two municipalities will co-operate with regard to decision-making, provision of municipal services and infrastructure projects. In addition, there will be an equitable allocation of land use and respect for property rights, freedom of worship and access to Jewish, Islamic and Christian holy sites, and geographic contiguity of Palestinian-held areas of Jerusalem with the north and south West Bank. Finally, Jerusalem will be one city, open to all to circulate, live, and work.
[...]
jqf-jerusalem.org |
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| To: Carolyn who started this subject | 8/24/2001 12:27:07 PM | | From: TimF | | | | I'm not saying I support this idea for a solution, I'm just wondering what people think about it.
A Way Out of the Middle East Impasse
nytimes.com
By THOMAS FRIEDMAN
The Middle East conflict has
gotten so violent and
depressing, you wonder how the
two sides can ever find a way
out. We need a new idea. I'd like
to propose one — but first some background.
If you listen to the Israeli left, the only way out of this
stalemate is more talks with Yasir Arafat. I was a strong
believer in the Oslo process, because Oslo was a
necessary and worthwhile test of whether Israel could
produce a Palestinian partner for a secure peace. It was a
test the majority of Israelis wanted, it was a test that
contributed mightily to the investment and prosperity
Israel enjoyed in the 1990's, which helped absorb so many
Russian immigrants, and it was a test that made possible
the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, as well as Israeli
diplomatic missions from Qatar to Morocco.
It was also a test that Israeli leaders, from Yitzhak Rabin
to Bibi Netanyahu to Ariel Sharon, felt was important
enough for each to participate in land-for-peace trades
with Mr. Arafat, because they each knew that there was no
military solution and that any long-term peace had to
involve Israel's ceding land in return for Mr. Arafat's
providing security. Finally, it was a test needed to unite
Israel: a majority of Israelis had to find out if there was an
alternative to permanent life on the barricades.
But at some point you have to say the test failed. That is
what Camp David symbolized. Mr. Arafat was not willing
to look his people in the eye and tell them that 95 percent
was all they were going to get and they needed to make the
best of it, nor was he willing to acknowledge a Jewish
connection to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Which is why I
don't believe the left's argument that more negotiations
now with Mr. Arafat will do the trick. Maybe Israel can
still strike a mini-deal or a cease-fire with Mr. Arafat, but
not a final peace.
That's right, says the Israeli right, so what we need now is
not more negotiations but more military pressure; now is
the time to crush Mr. Arafat and his whole gang.
No one can criticize Israel for retaliating in the harshest
manner for suicide bombs in restaurants; no country in the
world would behave otherwise. But the idea that there is a
tipping point, where enough military pressure on the
Palestinians will get them to say "uncle" and willingly
accept some mini-mini-state in the West Bank, is utter
fantasy. Five million Jews cannot sustain a military
solution against five million Palestinians and 95 million
Arabs.
O.K., says the Israeli right, then just smash them and then
put up a wall around Israel. Another fantasy. First of all,
thanks to all the ideological Jewish settlements that Israel
has set up in the West Bank and Gaza (recklessly cheered
on by the American Jewish right), Israel now has a huge
strategic-political problem.
If Israel keeps all the settlements and the Arab areas
around them, demographically it will become an apartheid
state or a non-Jewish state. If it tries unilaterally to uproot
some of the settlements, without any commitments from the
Palestinians, it will trigger a Jewish-Jewish civil war. It
will also provide a huge victory for Palestinian radicals
— who will have gotten land for war. If Israel uprooted
only some settlements and put up a wall, it would leave
behind a chopped-up Palestinian mini-state that would be
totally non-viable. It would be a seething cauldron,
uncontrolled by Israel, that could easily acquire heavier
weapons from Iraq and become a strategic threat.
In short, Oslo was a test that failed, but was aborted
before it was too late. The settlements are a continuing,
long-term threat to the entire Zionist enterprise. So what to
do? Staying in the West Bank and Gaza will slowly
destroy Israel from within, but just leaving and putting up
a wall could destroy Israel from without.
The only solution may be for Israel and the U.S. to invite
NATO to occupy the West Bank and Gaza and set up a
NATO-run Palestinian state, à la Kosovo and Bosnia. I'm
serious. Israel can't stay in the West Bank and Gaza and
remain a Jewish democracy; but it can't unilaterally
withdraw, put up a wall and leave an uncontrolled
Palestinian entity there — without creating a permanent
threat to Israel's existence. Nor, for that matter, can Israel
trust Mr. Arafat anymore to administer these areas
properly. What is needed is for Israel to turn these areas
over to NATO or a NATO- like force. The Palestinians
can have their state — but no army — under NATO's
watchful eye.
It's a long shot, but it addresses the real problem, and a
future column will explain how it might work. |
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| To: TimF who wrote (2929) | 8/24/2001 2:39:26 PM | | From: LV | | | | I think Friedman’s suggestion is tongue-in-cheek. Only insane would want to place NATO troops in Gaza and West Bank in midst of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists. Remember Somalia and Lebanon where we tried to serve as peacekeepers? Palestinian territories will be much worse IMO. Perhaps this is just Friedman’s way of teaching Europeans about realities of life in the Middle East <g>.
Building the wall around Palestinian areas is the least objectionable scenario. Israel should keep only Jerusalem and areas necessary for her defense, and evacuate the rest. Let the Palestinians build their own life. Who cares if radicals think that they won, just keep them on the other side of the wall. And then, maybe in a generation or two, some dialogue may be possible. As they say, high fences make good neighbors. And talking about Jewish-Jewish civil war is ridiculous. Israel is a free country, and any settler who wants to live under Palestinian Authority is free to do so, so no forced settlement evacuation is required. Besides, involuntary population transfer to and from occupied territories is against Geneva Convention, and we wouldn’t want any more UN denunciations of Israel than absolutely necessary <g>. And as far as violence across the wall, that is what the Army is for. Just let them do their job. |
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