| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (1919) | 9/13/2002 8:48:29 PM | | From: lorne | | | | Looks like Israel was correct in the way they dealt with the arab/pals....you agree? :o)
Arafat's political defeat called end of one-man rule
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, September 13, 2002
RAMALLAH — The joint resignation of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's cabinet spared the humiliation of a vote of no-confidence and constituted a significant political defeat, analysts said.
Palestinian sources said the vote against Arafat was a signal by at least 57 out of 88 legislators for the PA chairman to agree to the appointment of a prime minister and end his one-man rule. They said the Fatah Central Council had approached Arafat's key aide, Mahmoud Abbas, in late August to submit his candidacy.
Arafat was forced to disband his 21-member Cabinet on Wednesday when Palestinian legislators refused to approve a motion of confidence. Arafat now has two weeks to present a new Cabinet to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
"For years, we have thought that the chairman requires strategic ministers and should not deal with daily tasks," Palestinian legislator Khaddoura Fares said. "We are talking of the need of new leadership, rather than just one man."
Israeli and Palestinian analysts said Arafat's authority was undermined by members of his ruling Fatah movement. They said the legislators resisted appeals, cajoling and threats to shelve a motion of no confidence in the Cabinet.
At the last minute, Arafat's Cabinet resigned and thus spared the vote. Many of the legislators applauded the announcement that the Cabinet had resigned.
Israeli analysts and officials termed the vote against Arafat as an historic development and said Israel's intelligence community had predicted the confrontation at the legislature. They said Arafat will probably face a galvanized and growing opposition within the Fatah movement that wants to reduce his authority.
"This is one of the biggest blows that Arafat has sustained until now and it was done by his people," Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said.
Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash agreed. The general said he could not predict short-term development, asserting that much depends on the reaction of Israel and the United States.
"It is a slow, deep and staged process," Zeevi-Farkash said. "It depends a lot on us, a lot on the United States and the U.S. attack on Iraq."
Arafat announced that presidential and parliamentary elections would take place on Jan. 20. But Palestinian sources said opposition legislators reject this announcement and want a prime minister to whittle away Arafat's authority before elections are held.
PA officials blamed Israel and the United States for Arafat's defeat. They said both countries want to undermine Arafat to ensure he cannot win another election under his current authority.
"The only obstacle to the elections is not an internal one, it is Israel and the United States, who do not want elections because they don't want a strengthening of the Palestinian national leadership," PA Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo said.
At the same time, Israel has tried to bolster some ministers within the PA. Ben-Eliezer halted military prosecution of the son of PA Civil Affairs Minister Jamil Tarifi, who was charged with arms smuggling from Jordan to the West Bank. Tarifi himself was said to have been involved in the smuggling and his son was released from an Israeli prison.
worldtribune.com |
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| To: lorne who wrote (1923) | 9/14/2002 4:14:38 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Re: "This is one of the biggest blows that Arafat has sustained until now and it was done by his people," Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said.
LOL... and how would Mr Ben-Eliezer qualify the blow inflicted upon Yithzak Rabin?
The current Israeli strategy is to intensify the squeeze on the Fatah so that, ultimately, Hamas and Jihad get the upper hand... |
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| To: Raymond Duray who wrote (1921) | 9/14/2002 5:45:14 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Indeed, it sounds like "déjà vu" all over again.... I've edited the following excerpt:
One of the most fascinating items of Internet samizdat is a 2008 interview with Sergei YASTRZHEMBSKY, President Vladimir Putin's special advisor on Central Asia, conducted by the Belgian publication Le Nouvel Observatoire. In the interview -- translated by author and CIA critic William Plum -- YASTRZHEMBSKY boasts that the FSB was supporting terrorist activities outside Afghanistan six months before the US intervention, taking steps to "induce" the Americans to intervene:
YASTRZHEMBSKY: According to the official version of history, FSB aid to the Tajik rebels waned during 2000, that is to say, after the Taleban controlled most of Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1999. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1999 that President Putin signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a US military intervention.
LNO: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this US entry into war and looked to provoke it?
YASTRZHEMBSKY: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Americans to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
LNO: When the US justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight Al-Qaeda's terror network in Afghanistan, people blindly believed them. However, there was no solid evidence. You don't regret anything today?
YASTRZHEMBSKY: Regret what? That secret operation (911) was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Americans into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day the US officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Putin: "We now have the opportunity of dragging the US into another Vietnam war."
LNO: And neither do you regret having supported the Northern Alliance's war atrocities, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
YASTRZHEMBSKY: What is most important to the history of the world? Afghanistan or the continuity of the Russian empire? Some stirred-up Pashtun or bringing Central Asia to heel and the crackdown on Islamic troublemakers?
Interviewed in Oct. 2002 by columnist David Dorn, YASTRZHEMBSKY said he still had no regrets about launching the 911 covert operation, knowing it would likely induce the post-Cold War foe to fall into a trap.
The US occupation of Afghanistan was indeed Vietnam-like in its weariness, displacing more than a million Afghans and helping to tear apart a country that in 1979 had relatively little religious fanaticism and was making advances in the status of women.
In the upheaval, Afghanistan became a base for terrorists. Yet mainstream U.S. journalists refuse to mention the Nouvel Observatoire interview and fail to ask YASTRZHEMBSKY obvious questions about how his Afghan policy may have helped us get into the current crisis. Instead, mainstream media repeatedly shun YASTRZHEMBSKY and other former Russian foreign policymakers as unimportant technocrats whose wheeling and dealing are irrelevant to the crisis.
[...]
Adapted from:
fair.org |
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| To: average joe who wrote (1920) | 9/14/2002 6:09:31 AM | | From: Yaacov | | | | | No matter what Gus thinks, the sleeping giant(!!) if survives the forth coming battle will go back to tend his camels for another 1000 years! Gus is a crook that has found innocent guidance in the west. |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (1917) | 9/14/2002 6:35:50 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Prince describes Arab mistrust of U.S. on Iraq
Neil MacFarquhar The New York Times
Saturday, September 14, 2002
JIDDA The Arab world has been wary about the campaign against terrorism ever since President George W. Bush first described it as a crusade, his offhand remark conjuring up ghosts of the Middle Ages. Those ghosts were never completely laid to rest, and now, with talk of a war in Iraq, the Arab world believes the fight against terror may ultimately breed more violence, not less.
That dread is rooted in the perception that the entire effort to fight terrorism was shanghaied by Israel to justify its occupation of Palestinian land.
"We think that the Zionist movement is using this opportunity to make Islam and the Arabs the enemy of the West and this is entirely wrong," said Prince Khalid al Faisal al Saud of Saudi Arabia. "It is very frustrating to see your people killed every day; you see them on television, you see women and children being bombed by American airplanes, by American helicopters, American tanks and American money. This is disturbing."
"This makes this region the most explosive region in the world because of the feeling of frustration," he added.
[snip]
iht.com |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (1924) | 9/14/2002 2:13:35 PM | | From: lorne | | | | gussy. You said..." LOL... and how would Mr Ben-Eliezer qualify the blow inflicted upon Yithzak Rabin?"....
It does not surprise me that you would think that a very sad incident like that would be a reason for laughter. |
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