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Daily Star, Lebanon:

BEIRUT: Fighting between the Lebanese Army and Islamic extremists intensified in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli on Monday, with the death toll in two days of clashes rising to at least 79. Heavy black smoke hung in the air as the army reinforced positions around the camp and rolled in heavier equipment. Soldiers stepped up shelling of buildings where members of the Fatah al-Islam group were believed to have taken refuge…

Security sources said that 25 militants had been killed and that 40 were in custody. The army said 30 soldiers had been killed so far in the battle, and released photographs of 19 of them (see Page 2). Reports put the civilian death toll at 24.

The fighting is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 Civil War.

According to a 1969 agreement, the Lebanese army is not permitted to enter the Palestinian refugee camps, which contain numerous terrorist gangs. Apparently the agreement doesn’t forbid the Lebanese from firing mortars and artillery shells into the camps, because this is the approach they are taking. Water and electricity have been cut off since the fighting started. The refugee camp is actually a small city, with a population of about 30-40,000. Many of the terrorists are not Palestinians, and include Syrians, Saudis, Afghans, Yemenis, etc. (but I bet UNRWA is feeding them all). Druze and Christian Lebanese sources claim that Syria is sponsoring Fatah al Islam.

Violence is spreading, with several explosions reported in Beirut (this one is in the capital’s Verdun district), as well as firing in other refugee camps. As far as I can tell, nobody is blaming the Mossad for being behind these events, but possibly I just haven’t looked in the right places. There are about 350,000 ‘Palestinian refugees’ in various camps in Lebanon.

The “International Community” deplores the violence, of course. Interestingly, they are not calling the Lebanese Army’s use of heavy weapons in a civilian area ‘disproportionate’:

“We had long and full discussion on Lebanon, with reasons for grave concern related to the violent incidents of yesterday and this morning,” UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said after a meeting with Arab League chief Amr Moussa in Cairo.

“On behalf of the [UN] Secretary General, I will urge everybody to act in the most responsible manner, or else I feel that the whole situation might … fall off the cliff,” he said.

The US State Department defended on Monday the actions of the Lebanese security forces, saying they were working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists”…

UN chief Ban Ki-moon saw the fighting as a threat to all of Lebanon, his spokeswoman said Monday. “The actions of Fatah al-Islam are an attack on Lebanon’s stability and sovereignty,” Michele Montas said, adding that Ban “welcomes the united stand taken by Palestinian factions in Lebanon denouncing these attacks on the Lebanese Army”…

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spoke with Premier Fouad Siniora on Sunday to assure him of France’s support. He also “expressed France’s solidarity and trust in the Lebanese authorities to restore order and calm”…

Technorati Tags: Lebanon

A car took a direct hit from a Qassam missile in Sderot today. One person was killed, another wounded.

The Popular Resistance Committees’ military wing, which claimed responsibility for the barrage of Qassam rockets on Sderot that killed one woman on Monday said it would continue to fire rockets at Israel…

According to Abu Abir, the Palestinian resistance organizations would not back down, even if the targeted killings reach more senior leaders.

…We want to see thousands more residents of Sderot and the vicinity be evacuated,” Abu Abir said. — YNet

Israel is determined to stop the rocket attacks, if necessary by killing the the leadership of groups like the PRC and Hamas. We’ll see who prevails.

By the way, “Abu Abir” would best stay indoors and think about the virgins that he is going to meet shortly.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Sderot, Qassam

From today’s Jerusalem Post:

The US ambassador to Israel on Monday said it is unlikely that convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard will ever be released, saying the fact that he has not been executed should be seen as an act of clemency by Washington…

“It came out in the trial very clearly, Jonathan Pollard took money for what he did, he sold out his country,” [Ambassador Richard] Jones said in comments at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. “The fact that he wasn’t executed is the mercy that Jonathan Pollard will receive.”

“This is a very emotional issue in the United States,” Jones said. “I know he was helping a friend, but that’s what makes it even more emotional for Americans - if a friend would cooperate in aiding and abetting someone who is committing treason against his own country.”

The ambassador’s statement is not only malicious, as Esther Pollard said, but absurd. If it were especially heinous to spy for a ‘friend’, then the penalty for spying for an ally would be greater than that of spying for a hostile power; and this isn’t the case.

Pollard’s supporters often point out that his sentence was especially severe compared to those given to other spies who had seriously damaged US security (for money as well as for other motives). It’s particularly hard to understand why Pollard received the same sentence as Aldrich Ames, who spied for the Soviet Union and was responsible for the deaths of numerous American agents. Pollard even spent seven years in solitary confinement; this was not the case with Ames.

There’s been lots of speculation about the reason for this. It seems to me that the most likely explanation is that Pollard knows something which would be so embarrassing to the US government — or to particular officials — that they cannot afford to allow him to be in a position to speak. This could relate to policy connected to Iraq or Iran.

The US has always kept information about why Pollard’s crime is considered so serious secret. Much more information is available about other cases, such as that of Ames. The secrecy, the remarkable disparity in sentencing, plus comments like those of Mr. Jones, give rise to all kinds of speculation about what Pollard knows and what motives — including antisemitism and the desire to make an example of a Jew with ‘dual loyalty’ — may be behind his treatment.

It seems to me that if the US cannot release Pollard and allow him to go to Israel (he’s served 22 years at this point), then the least that it can and should do is be more forthcoming about why Pollard’s offense justifies the treatment that he’s received.

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Pollard

As you will recall, Arab former Knesset member Azmi Bishara was accused of having spied for Hezbollah during the war, supposedly including transmitting targeting information for Hezbollah’s rockets. He’s currently in Qatar; if he were to return to Israel he could be arrested and tried, possibly for his life.

The Balad movement [Bishara’s Arab nationalist party in the Knesset] is planning to launch an international campaign this week demanding that Israel drop the case against former MK Azmi Bishara. The party’s most senior Knesset member, Jamal Zahalka, will leave Wednesday for a five-day tour in the US to promote the issue.

Balad will call for the establishment of an international committee to investigate the way Bishara was allegedly framed, and urge Israel to cancel the probe against him.

“We are ready for any inquiry commission or international investigation of this matter,” Zahalka told Ynet. — YNet

I just bet they are. Like the International Court of Justice’s decision that Israel’s security fence violated international law, it’s hard to imagine Israel getting a fair shake from an international commission, and even more so from world opinion.

Bishara was apparently allowed to leave Israel because the government feared the media circus that would surround a trial.

It looks like there will be one anyway.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Bishara

The BBC reports:

Fighting between Lebanese troops and Islamist gunmen from a Palestinian refugee camp has killed at least 40 people in Tripoli, northern Lebanon.

Some 15 fighters from the radical Fatah Islam group [an Islamist organization not to be confused with the al-Fatah organization of Mahmoud Abbas — ed.] and 23 Lebanese soldiers died in intense battles, reports said.

At least two civilians were also killed and a further 40 reportedly hurt in the worst internal fighting Lebanon has seen since the civil war ended in 1990.

There’s some dispute about whether the group is linked to al-Qaeda or Syria, but there’s no doubt that they are another nasty bunch that believes that the path to paradise runs through puddles of blood.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Fatah Islam

By Vic Rosenthal (updated for clarity on 21 May)

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) is disturbed by the relationship between some elements of the US Jewish community and Christian Zionist Pastor John Hagee.

(more…)

The Arab League Peace Initiative says this about the Palestinian right of return:

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

And what does UN resolution 194 say about refugees?

11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible…

Maurice Ostroff, in his piece Factoids and the Palestinian Right of Return, has made some very good points about this:

…since resolution 194 specifically applies only to refugees who wish “to live at peace with their neighbors”, it does not apply to the Palestinians since both Hamas and PLO charters emphatically reject peace with Israel. [both Hamas and PLO documents can be found at Know Your Enemy — ed.]

The official Palestinian Media Center web site confirms that promised changes to the PLO Charter have not been made. Article 9 of the PLO covenant still plainly declares that armed struggle is not merely tactical, it is the overall strategy. Article 19 rejects the 1947 UN partition, implicitly rejecting the Quartet’s proposed two-state solution. Moreover it advocates destruction of the entire Jewish state. Article 20 deems the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate null and void.

Further, Ostroff points out that the resolution mentions only actual refugees, not their descendents. And full implementation of this resolution would also require compensation to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab states.

So maybe an agreement based on resolution 194 would not be so bad after all.

Technorati Tags: Israel, refugees, Palestinians, UN resolution 194

It’s been suggested that the worst thing for Israel would be a complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA), leaving Israel responsible for millions of Palestinians in the territories and with no one to talk to:

For the spiraling anarchy inside Gaza is not something Israel can watch from outside. A collapse of the PA as a government, something that the events of the last few days have shown is a real possibility, would have far-reaching strategic ramifications for Israel and could fundamentally change the two-state concept that has underpinned Israeli policy since 1993 and the Oslo Accords…

In a paper Reut published last November, [Gidi] Grinstein wrote that the aim of this strategy “is to establish one Palestinian/Arab/Islamic state in place of Israel through actions that will bring about Israel’s internal collapse as a state.”

According to this strategy, “the occupation accelerates Israel’s implosion and therefore should be sustained. Either way, the Hamas government in and of itself serves the ‘Strategy of Implosion’ because it creates a political deadlock, deepens the Palestinian crisis of representation, and erodes the PA’s capacity to govern.”

Grinstein, who was an adviser to Ehud Barak when Barak served as prime minister, said that the collapse of the PA - a situation of “non-governance there” - was bad for Israel. “We will have no one to talk to, and too many people to shoot at,” he said.

This analysis depends, of course, on the assumption that while there is a functional PA, there is someone to talk to whose ultimate goal is a peaceful two-state settlement.

That is by no means certain. The late, lamented Fatah organization was a creature of Israel’s greatest enemy since Amalek, Yasser Arafat. While differing from Hamas in strategy — prepared to use diplomacy as well as force — Fatah, in the opinion of many and in the words of its charter, sought the same goal: the replacement of the Jewish state with one ruled by Arabs.

If this is correct, then the destruction of Fatah is not particularly good or bad for Israel. If the “peace process” is to turn out, at the end of the day, to have been a mirage with peace always shimmering in the desert beyond reach, better to know that now.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, Hamas, Grinstein

By Vic Rosenthal 

The IDF, while apparently not intending to invade Gaza in force, is ramping up activities to stop the barrage of Qassam missiles hitting Sderot, Ashkelon and environs. In the past few days, more than 85 rockets have fallen in the area near the Gaza strip. Israeli and Palestinian observers suggest that Hamas wants to involve Israel to distract attention from the horrific fighting between it and Fatah, so the plan seems to be to strike hard at those directly involved in firing rockets and their commanders without being drawn into a large-scale invasion. We’ll see if they can walk this tightrope successfully.

Meanwhile, the world press has not been paying much attention to the rocket barrage. News in the US centers on Iraq, while in Europe the Palestinian civil war takes precedence. When a single car bombing in Iraq can kill sixty, the ten Qassam fatalities over the past few years aren’t big news; and neither are the hundreds of wounded and shock victims, although the fear that the rockets have generated is depopulating the city of Sderot. But the media are beginning to pay attention to Israeli military responses, as always, so we will see more coverage in the near future.

The fact is, as Sderot mayor Eli Moyal has complained, “no [other] country in the world” would allow an enemy to bombard a city for years with impunity. Imagine the disproportionate response from the United States if Mexicans were bombarding El Paso!

But as Ami Isseroff has pointed out (see my previous post), the real impact on Israel from Gaza will probably come from the fact that the Islamist Hamas forces are crushing the US-supported Fatah militia, despite the huge numerical and logistical superiority of the latter. Isseroff compares Fatah to the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), and today’s Iraqi army. No more need be said, from a military point of view.

So at some point in the near future, Israel will be facing a Palestinian entity entirely controlled by the Islamic Hamas, which has refused to even pretend to accept the Quartet principles of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and accepting prior agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Then, as Isseroff implies, the question will simply be how long it will take before most of the world supports Hamas as the ‘legitimate’ Palestinian government. Norway and Switzerland already do.

Once this happens, the chances for any kind of peaceful solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict that leaves Israel viable, either a unilateral Israeli one or a negotiated settlement that includes the Palestinians, approaches zero. Like Sderot, all Israel will face a future of unrelieved struggle.

In the next few weeks, perhaps sooner, we will see the outlines of the future emerge, both for Sderot and for the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Sderot, Palestinians, Hamas, Qassam rockets

On the 6 PM (Pacific time) newscast today, here is how NPR described events in Gaza:

Despite promises to observe a cease-fire, fighting broke out today between Palestinian factions in the Gaza strip. Palestinian security officials say the fighting killed at least 16 people. They said fighters from the ruling Hamas movement shot and killed 6 guards belonging to the rival Fatah party. Hamas gunmen also mistakenly killed 5 of their own fighters in an apparent friendly fire incident. Israel fired missiles at Hamas positions in Gaza, saying the attack was in response to Hamas rockets fired into Israeli territory. — NPR (transcribed from streaming audio, no link available)

Ignoring errors (fighting didn’t ‘break out’ today, it’s been underway for some time), was NPR unaware that about 50 Palestinian rockets were fired into Sderot in the last 24 hours, causing numerous injuries and resulting in the evacuation of hundreds of residents? Shouldn’t they have mentioned this?

The report gives the impression that Israel just attacked for the hell of it, ’saying’ that it was in response to Hamas’ rockets. Of course I understand that the conscientious journalists of NPR don’t really know the motivation of the Israelis, so they have to depend on what they say – but honestly NPR, is it a mystery that Israel would want to stop the Hamas rocket barrage?

I’ve discussed NPR’s subtle and not-so-subtle pro-Palestinian bias before. The next time your local Public Radio station asks for your donation, tell them ‘no’, and explain exactly why.

Technorati Tags: NPR, Gaza, Israel

There’s little to add to this shocking eyewitness account of civil war in Gaza:

With battles raging outside my building and my windows blown out by bullets, I sit in a dark hallway outside my apartment with my wife and baby. It’s dangerous inside and outside.

Today I have seen people shot before my eyes, I heard the screams of terrified women and children in a burning building, and I argued with gunmen who wanted to take over my home.

I have seen a lot in my years as a journalist in Gaza, but this is the worst it’s been.

Much of the fighting is taking place right here in my neighborhood. I went outside a few times to report, just around the house. I saw a building on fire after Hamas gunmen attacked, and I heard the screams of people who could not get out because of the gun battles.

CONTINUE

Fighting between Palestinians in the Gaza strip has intensified, with the Jerusalem Post reporting that at least 20 were killed and 70 wounded on Tuesday. Large numbers of Qassam rockets have been fired at Israel, with some Israeli and Palestinian sources suggesting that this may be an attempt by Hamas to involve Israel so as to distract attention from the factional warfare.

Meanwhile, Moussa Abu Marzouk of Hamas’ political bureau blames it on everyone else:

“The international community and Arab countries shoulder part of the responsibility for the current events due to their attitudes toward the national unity government,” Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press by telephone in Damascus. “The continued financial and political siege has pushed matters to this simmering tension.”

“The Israelis are behind all these events,” Abu Marzouk said. “It’s illogical that the Arabs stand idle watching the Palestinian arena while it’s on the verge of explosion under the siege. … This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion.”

Umm, I see.

Speaking of the continued financial siege against the Palestinians, here’s a photo of the home of Rashid Abu Shbak, the Fatah ’security’ chief in Gaza, which was recently attacked by Hamas. Notice the signs of abject poverty, which the selfless Palestinian leadership bravely shares in solidarity with the struggling masses in Gaza.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Palestinians