← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 16893 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-02-22
2005-02-22 13:34 | User Profile
[url]http://www.wpherald.com/print.php?StoryID=20050218-031832-5385r[/url]
[url]www.wpherald.com[/url] Commentary: A third intifada? By Arnaud de Borchgrave UPI Editor at Large Published February 18, 2005
No sooner out of the starting blocks on a rerun of the Mideast peace process than an avalanche threatened to close the road. This time it was not the Palestinians and the long-running shell game whose champion player was the late Yasser Arafat. Israeli commentators are already referring to the gathering storm as "the third intifada."
Writing in Yediot Ahronot, a leading Israeli newspaper, Nahum Barnea expects in the coming months, "a furious, hurt community ... prepared to take violent action and a leadership that is forced to line up behind the threats of the militants. This is a dangerous game of brinksmanship and judging by past experience, is liable to end up in disaster."
Dalia Rabin, the late prime minister's daughter, writing in the same paper, said, "Wake up before it is too late. If we don't (act now) to stop the deterioration, we will once again witness the horrible spectacle of the murder of another prime minister." Next fall will mark the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which was preceded by the same hate rhetoric now echoing throughout Israel.
Jane's Foreign Report, the authoritative weekly intelligence digest, says hundreds of Orthodox rabbis, including some in the armed forces, have called on IDF soldiers to refuse to uproot settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. A movement called "Defensive Shield" claims to have collected 10,000 signatures of soldiers and reservists who have pledged to refuse orders to dismantle any of the 21 settlements in Gaza and 145 in the West Bank. They house 8,200 and 243,000 Jewish settlers respectively.
"Israel's army, long considered one of the main pillars of the Jewish state and a great social equalizer, is in grave danger of being politicized," said Foreign Report. It has been infiltrated by right-wingers for more than a decade -- Orthodox seminary graduates and hard-line settlers. Some estimates put the number of diehard right-wingers at 30 percent of the IDF officer corps.
Outgoing Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, 54, who was not given the almost routine one-year extension to the normal three-year term, has already publicly warned the army may fall apart over the forcible evacuation of settlers. About a dozen reserve battalions are to be mobilized during the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, which begins next July. Shin Bet (internal security) chief Avi Dichter warned at the beginning of the year "right-wing extremists and diehard settlers were planning to provoke bloodshed when the army moves in to evacuate settlements."
There were also warnings of possible plots to attack the third holiest shrine in Islam, al-Aqsa Mosque to provoke the Palestinians into retaliation and sabotage the Gaza disengagement plan.
When the Knesset approved this week the dismantling of the Gaza settlements, it set aside $1 billion to resettle the settlers. Many of them are planning to move to West Bank colonies that will also have to be removed if a viable Palestinian state is to be created. But Edward Abington, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem who now advises the Palestinian Authority, said settlement expansion was "proceeding at a very rapid pace all over the West Bank. They are encircling East Jerusalem with settlements and roads only settlers can use."
Seventeen members of Prime Minister Sharon's Likud Party voted against the Gaza withdrawal plan. One of them began a roll call of Jews sentenced to "deportation," adding after each name "Jew, designated for expulsion." But far left-wing and Arab parties rushed into the breach -- and saved the day for Sharon.
West Bank and Gaza rabbis are saying the Torah forbids Jews from abandoning any part of the Biblical lands, and the settlers are duty bound to resist. Settlers wearing Star of David armbands, reminiscent of what Hitler's brown shirts forced Jews to wear before World War II, have handed out leaflets calling Sharon "Hitler's partner."
Rowdies have already roughed up cabinet ministers and some even received death threats aimed at their children. M.J. Rosenberg's weekly newsletter says Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit, who lost a child to cancer, was told he would soon attend funerals of his remaining children and that his late daughter's death was God's punishment for his ideology.
The Yesha Council, which is the leadership of the settler movement, has endorsed a call for settlers to resist evacuation through civil disobedience. The fear is it won't stop there.
On her first trip to the Middle East as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice signaled the U.S. expected concessions from the Sharon government to help build a democratic Palestine. She called this "hard decisions" -- which clearly meant the U.S. expected more than the evacuation of Gaza and four insignificant illegal outposts in the northern part of the West Bank.
Little did Rice realize how even a no-brainer like the evacuation of Gaza could trigger something as momentous as a third intifada.
Copyright é 2005 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
2005-02-22 15:18 | User Profile
Of course, the obvious US reaction to this should be to immediately stop sending Israel [URL=http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html]$15 mil a day[/URL], disengage from the peace process, and come home and mind our own business, though I wouldn't be opposed to trying to cut a deal with the Arabs for a reduction in oil prices in exchange for eliminating aid to Israel.
2005-02-22 15:42 | User Profile
Either that or replace it by sending all of our dispensationalists instead! :lol:
2005-02-22 16:30 | User Profile
I like the way that Sharon is plying the part of the "good" and "bad" guy at the same time, "Oi Vey Oi Vey what can I do? my people wont let me liberate the Palestinian people" say Sharon.
The Zionist have 78% of all Palestinians land and they still want the rest, what is going on now is nothing more than an illusion of freedom for the Palestinians, the Jews are expanding their settlements as fast as they can in order to still steal more land from the Palestinians.
Let's face it people, as long as the Zionists are on Arabs land (the whole of Arabia) they will find no peace and will for ever be on a state of alert. I only hope that the US stops given them our hard earned tax money in order to keep them afloat, money that we need right here for schools and the homeless.
"Freedom under the gun is only an illusion of freedom for it is still dictatorship"......Ponce