In this AP photo by Nasser Nasser, the pallie on the right has just been hit and is dropping his weapon.
It is number three in this sequence:
Posted on 03/29/2002 3:39:58 AM PST by kattracks
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops opened fire Friday on the private offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian officials said.
A Palestinian official said Arafat's life was in jeopardy.
Palestinians have been waging an uprising against occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since September 2000. At least 1,107 Palestinians and 381 Israelis have been killed in tit-for-tat violence since the revolt began.
WELL HELL, more suicide bombers were coming anyway, what's the difference? Actually, there will be a differance now that the Israelis are taking the gloves off. And if the Israelis don't have the right to fight back against terrorists, then nobody does. The thought of Arafat and his top aides sweating like terrified rats in that bunker is such a pleasant mental image.
With any luck, they will soon be able to carry out this interlocution only with a ouija board.
"I understand how the Israelis might feel..."
Oh, yeah, she knows how Israelis feel. Sure. Well, I am sure the Israelis are greatly comforted by her empathy.
The police say the suicide bomber was a woman who blew herself up when she was challenged by a security guard.
At least 19 people were hurt and three people, including the bomber, killed in the blast inside the SuperSol supermarket, at the shopping mall in the Kiryat Yovel neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
Eye witnesses described scenes of carnage in which much of the large supermarket was destroyed.
Force of blast
One shopper said: "The blast was huge. She (the bomber) was a few metres from the entrance inside".
Another witness, Hanna Cohen, said she was about to enter the store when there was "was a huge blast, and I saw people flying all around, arms and legs"
One man, who arrived just after the blast, described what he saw in an interview with Israel Radio.
"I got there two minutes afterwards. It was a horrible scene," he said, having given his name as Moshe.
He said two dead bodies were at the entrance, apparently those of the bomber and a guard who tried to stop her.
"I understood that the guard did not let the terrorist in, and they were blown up together," he said.
In the aftermath of the attack as medical teams tried to help the injured and police began to seal of the area, a man sat on the steps outside the shopping centre, crying and hugging two small children.
In this AP photo by Nasser Nasser, the pallie on the right has just been hit and is dropping his weapon.
It is number three in this sequence:
You can only go to the well so many times before it dries up. The time is past for political solutions, they have been tried unsuccessfully for years, due to the unwillingness of one of the parties to compromise. Now that party is reaping what they have sown.
| NEWSMAKER - Arafat's Palestinian state remains a distant dream | |
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By Wafa Amr
RAMALLAH, West Bank, March 29 (Reuters) - From his early
days as a guerrilla fighter to his 1994 return from exile as
Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat has defied the odds to
pursue the struggle for an independent Palestinian state.
But his long-held dream looks far from realisation after
Israeli forces entered his presidential compound in the West
Bank city of Ramallah as part of Israeli efforts to isolate him
and crack down on militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has confined Arafat to
Ramallah for more than three months in his drive to quell the
18-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Arafat, 72, who wears his trademark black-and-white
chequered headdress in the shape of a map of Palestine, pledged
from his besieged office to continue the struggle for a state
with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.
"No Palestinian and no one in the Arab nation will surrender
or kneel," he said in a telephone interview.
Vowing to defy Sharon, he added: "The only thing he can do
is take me as the corpse of a martyr. He will not take me any
other way."
Arafat's popularity among his people has risen since his
confinement began in early December, while opinion polls show
Israelis have been losing confidence in Sharon.
But he came under new pressure on Friday, when Sharon
declared him an enemy and vowed to take widespread action to
isolate his Palestinian Authority wherever it was believed to be
fostering a "terrorist infrastructure".
Palestinian officials said Arafat was facing the toughest
challenge of his political life and a new test of his reputation
as a political survivor.
Many Middle East observers say that if anyone can get out of
this fix it is Arafat, long renowned for his wiliness and his
ability to survive whatever comes his way, from civil wars to a
plane crash in the Libyan desert in 1991.
"Arafat was able to lead his people from exile, and he'll
continue to lead his people no matter what kind of situation
he's in," said Palestinian political analyst Ghassan al-Khatib.
"His political position is much stronger now because his
people feel they can identify with him. The Palestinians and now
the Arab public do understand he's facing this pressure because
he refuses to make political concessions," he said.
MORE BLOODSHED FEARED
Israeli political analyst Abraham Sela said putting Arafat
under such pressure could have the opposite effect to the one
desired by Israel, by fuelling Palestinian resentment and
provoking more violence.
"Will placing Arafat under siege solve the problem? No,
definitely not. Violence will lead to more violence," he said.
Israel and the United States want Arafat to crack down on
militant Islamic groups behind suicide bombings, but Palestinian
support for such groups has swelled since the uprising began.
Arafat says army blockades and Israeli attacks on
Palestinian security targets have limited his ability to arrest
the militants and prevent their attacks.
Arafat has survived assassination squads, Israel's 1982
invasion of his Lebanon power base and international isolation
after he took Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's side in the
buildup to the 1991 Gulf War.
He shared a Nobel Peace Prize with slain Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign
minister, for signing the historic 1993 Oslo peace accords.
The peace accords led to his return from exile in 1994 as
Palestinian president, and he subsequently managed to gain
partial or full control of about 40 percent of the West Bank and
much of the Gaza Strip.
After 18 months of tit-for-tat violence, the interim peace
deals now lie in tatters.
Since the uprising began Israelis have been divided, some
demanding tougher action against Arafat, including ousting him,
while others want their army to withdraw completely from the
territories it has occupied since 1967.
Both Palestinian and Israeli analysts predict much worse
bloodshed and insecurity if a ceasefire is not reached soon.
Sela said keeping Arafat penned up in Ramallah was unlikely to
help secure a truce.
"Keeping Arafat in Ramallah during this operation will make
the whole effort look even more ridiculous, and if Arafat
remains the ultimate authority he will not be more receptive to
the Israeli demands," Sela said.
((Jerusalem Newsroom, +972 2 537 0502;
jerusalem.newsroom@reuters.com))
29 MAR 2002 14:29:32
NEWSMAKER-Arafat's Palestinian state remains a distant dream
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To badly paraphrase General Patton "You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win by making the other dumb b*****d die for his."
-ksen
Hey Igor, does the word "Chechnya" ring a bell? Pot, meet kettle. Either practice what you preach or shut the hell up.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine criticised Israel's "attempt to stifle Arafat".
Hubert, you will find American's have a long memory. We will remember your country's actions against us and our allies. We will remember you were "against us" in the war on terror, and that you refused to provide any information about the hijacker we caught and put on trial. Now why don't you just sit down, shut up, and go find someone to surrender to. You didn't seem to mind when tens of thousands of allied soldiers were dying on your soil, fighting for YOUR freedom.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke by telephone to Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to press for a ceasefire and urge both sides to seize the opportunity offered by an Arab summit's endorsement of Saudi peace proposals.
That's awfully generous of you Javier. A great peace plan just as long as someone else has to cough up the land to placate the Palestinian terrorists. Odd, we don't see you offering them up land for a "homeland". Especially given the track record of those Arab States at this summit of breaking their promises in the past. The same summit that recognized Hamas as a legitimate organization, even after it claimed credit for the Passover bombing. Javier, sit down, shut up, and find a nice history book of the 1930's about Europe and read up on what appeasing your enemy gets you.
"Arafat is our interlocutor, as EU leaders said at the Barcelona summit (on March 16). He remains our interlocutor and the legitimate authority," Solana's spokeswoman Cristina Gallach told Reuters.
Cristina, would this be the same EU who refuses to recognize known terrorist organizations within it's member states own borders, as identified by the US? The same EU who refuses to freeze the financial assets of these terrorist organizations, claiming they're not? The organizations who have claimed credit for assassinations and bombings of other nations representatives? The same EU who refused to participate in an anti-drug meeting (not a single EU nation showed) in an effort to curb the drug traffic in Europe that is being used to finance terrorist groups? Cristina, sit down, shut up, and contimplate the existence of the EU if the US and UK had taken the same stance with Hilter that you are proposing today.
I understand how the Israelis might feel faced with this terrifying pressure of attacks...but I don't think that massive repression and the attempt to stifle Arafat...can lead to a solution
As opposed to what? Surrendering to your enemy in record time? Letting other nations send their husbands and boys to die on your soil to fight for your freedom, because you were too spineless to do it yourself? Hey frenchy, sit down, shut up, and start drawing up plans to return the brave US soldiers buried on french soil back to the US. Your country is a disgrace to which they died for.
We strongly call on both the Israelis and Palestinians to exercise restraint to the greatest extent possible, immediately cease all violent activities and avoid heading towards total conflict," the ministry said in a statement.
This coming from a country with no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no freedom of expression, and with forced abortions upon women who have more then the amount dictated by the state. The world remembers watching you send your tanks and soldiers into Tiananmen square, killing the students, while denying it. Pot meet Kettle. Sit down, shut up, and pray Bush doesn't have big enough brass ones to pull your Most Favored Nation status the criminal in office before him granted you.
We call on both sides to take a rational path. Particularly Israel, in order to display rational, forward-looking and constructive stances, needs to review many concepts and views it holds," Turkish state minister and government spokesman, Sukru Sina Gurel was quoted as saying by state news agency Anatolian
Especially Israel? Sukru, remember that the next time you complain about the PKK and the EU's similar response to your complaints. Now sit down, shut up, and stop being a hypocrate, or expect your own argument to become worthless.
| US mulls "appropriate response" to Mideast events | |
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WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - The United States withheld
comment on the Israeli incursion into the headquarters of
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Friday, saying it was
"assessing appropriate responses to events in the region".
A State Department spokeswoman said U.S. envoy Anthony
Zinni, who has been trying to arrange a cease-fire between
Israelis and Palestinians, is carrying on his mediation work
but officials declined to say how long he would stay.
"We have followed developments overnight and this morning
in the Middle East," said spokeswoman Julie Reside.
"General Zinni remains in the region and is in contact with
the parties and he continues his work. We are monitoring events
very closely and are assessing appropriate responses to
developments in the region," she added.
Israeli troops smashed their way into Arafat's presidential
compound on Friday and battled Palestinian security forces
around his headquarters, witnesses said. They swept into
Ramallah, nine miles (15 km) north of Jerusalem, after Israel
declared Arafat its enemy and vowed to isolate him following
the bloodiest Palestinian suicide attack in 18 months of
conflict.
((Jonathan Wright, State Department bureau, +1 202 898 8393,
fax +1 202 659 5254, jonathan.wright@reuters.com))
29 MAR 2002 14:36:33
US mulls "appropriate response" to Mideast events
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Oh, I get it the EU expects Israel to lay down and play dead. Only people with an ounce of sanity understand :
NO ARABS, NO TERROR..NO ARABS, NO ATTACKS
Arafat, 72, who wears his trademark black-and-white chequered headdress in the shape of a map of Palestine...
Half the problem is that the Europeans and other apologists for Arab terror still refuse to acknowledge what is plain to see, and project their own views of a peaceful solution onto Arafat and the Palestinians, who clearly have never abandoned their fight for the utter conquest of Israel rather than merely an "independent state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital." This Reuters dispatch is sadly typical. The Israelis decided to negotiate with the PLO, thinking that bribing Arafat with legitimacy and a state of his own might induce him to settle for less than "all of historic Palestine." It seemed to be working for a while, but close observers saw that Arafat never abandoned his step-by-step approach to conquest. Negotiate for as much as you can get, then terrorize for more. Rinse, repeat.
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