Posted on 06/27/2006 1:44:38 AM PDT by familyop
PRESTWICK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel late on Monday to give diplomacy a chance to win the release of an Israeli soldier taken hostage by militants in Gaza.
Palestinians in northern Gaza have begun blocking roads with mounds of earth and Israeli armor has massed on the other side of the Gaza frontier as Israel awaits word on the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Palestinian gunmen and taken to Gaza on Sunday.
"There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the situation, not to let the situation escalate and to give diplomacy a chance to work to try to get this release," Rice told reporters who landed in Scotland for a refueling stop en route to Pakistan.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held Hamas, an Islamist group that came to power in March, and the Palestinian Authority chaired by President Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the assault by gunmen on the frontier with Gaza during which Shalit was abducted.
"The time is approaching for a comprehensive, sharp and severe Israeli operation. We will not wait forever," Olmert said in a speech. "We will not become a target of Hamas-terrorist blackmail."
Rice said there was a concerted international effort to win the soldier's release and that she had talked to Israel's foreign minister and Abbas to seek a resolution.
The United States is Israel's most important ally and also has strong influence over Abbas, who has received consistent U.S. support in his power struggle with a Hamas-led government.
Rice said that if Hamas was behind the raid it would show that the group -- considered a terrorist organization by the United States -- was ignoring international pressure to eschew violence.
"This is not behavior that is tolerable in the international system," she said.
Why don't you change your screen name to TalkHard the Negotiator?
> Why don't you change your screen name to TalkHard the Negotiator?
Why doesn't GWB just fire Condoleeza Rice and appoint *you* to be Secretary of State instead?
I'm glad Condi's running the show: she seems to know what she's doing. Gung-ho diplomacy is a dangerous vice to indulge -- particularly at the helm of a massive superpower like the USA. Thankfully GWB and Condi know this, even if you don't.
I would make a better Defense Minister of Israel than Amir Peretz, that's for damn sure.
If you think that no one who isn't the President or the Secretary of State should ever be allowed to criticize foreign policy or national policy, because "all those leaders know better than we do" then forums like Free Republic shouldn't even exist. Why are you posting here?
Never, never hate your enemy. It affects your judgment. And never, never limit your options.
I never said anything about Hate. I meant, these islamic extremist terrorists only understand death. It's all they know and they will never stop short of that. If the world keeps negotiating with them, they will have incentive to kidnap more and more. I still say NO negotiations. Find them and kill them. Plain and simple.
> I would make a better Defense Minister of Israel than Amir Peretz, that's for damn sure.
I'd say that depends on how you define "better" -- based on your posts, your outcomes would produce more of the same in the middle east: needless bloodshed, partizan warfare, and muslims hell-bent on driving the State of Israel into the Mediterranean Sea.
For the past 60-odd years the State of Israel has followed policies very similar to the ones you are advocating. And the Middle East is a shambles, and getting worse.
The main weakness of the "no negotiation" strategy is that it requires you to crush your enemies -- and this will never happen so long as Arab and Jew occupy the same land. It is a futile war of attrition that will go nowhere. And has gone nowhere. Peace is never an option with the "no negotiation" strategy: except it be at bayonet-point. And that's no real peace: it's only a delayed Reckoning.
I think the most useful thing the USA could do in the middle east is to order the State of Israel to pull its head in, and to send the exact same message to the Palestinian Authority. Declare a unilateral truce. And severely punish the first party that breaks the truce, militarily if need be.
Then sit all parties down and negotiate.
Will it happen? Probably not.
> I still say NO negotiations. Find them and kill them. Plain and simple.
Plain, yes: the message is as plain as a snub-nose .38 Special poked into the ribs -- not at all subtle.
Simple? If it were simple, you Yanks would have captured Osama bin Laden by now.
The Israelis do it all the time. They have exchanged prisoners before.
Um, hello, it has been years of wasted money and one sided "negotiations" that have gotten the Israelis into this quagmire. They need to tell the international leftists to 'f' off and strongly punish these terrorists.
> Um, hello, it has been years of wasted money and one sided "negotiations" that have gotten the Israelis into this quagmire.
Shyeah right. The Israelis don't "negotiate", and neither do the Palestinians. The Israelis demand "my-way-or-else" and the Palistinians reply "oh yeah? make me."
It's a deadly, childish schoolyard brawl that should never be afforded the dignity of being called a "negotiation".
Your BBC leftist talking points don't wash, here.
"The fallout in the Middle East from Israel's botched attempted assassination of a senior Hamas official in Jordan examined; scenes shown of Palestinian political prisoners who were released along with Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in exchange for the two Mossad agents in Jordan."
See my post #71. The Israelis do negotiate with terrorists and have done so many times.
> Your BBC leftist talking points don't wash, here.
The mere fact that I disagree with you makes me Leftist? I'd say that's an excessively arrogant position for your argument to take.
And we don't watch the BBC DownUnder...
> See my post #71. The Israelis do negotiate with terrorists and have done so many times.
They do indeed.
The Israelis have also sent Mossad agents into at least one friendly country and tried to steal a handicapped person's passport and identity.
I'm generally pro-Israel, but I stop well short of declaring them completely innocent parties with their current struggles in Palestine: there's wrong on both sides, neither side are angels.
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