Saturday, February 3, 2007

تدمير الجامعة الإسلامية بحثاً عن شاليط!


بقلم: د.إبراهيم حمّامي

"تكالبت مرتزقة عبّاس ممن يتسمون بحرس الرئاسة على اقتحام الجامعة الإسلامية وتدميرها وحرق كتبها وسرقة محتوياتها في عملية همجية بربرية غير مسبوقة في التاريخ إلا عند سقوط بغداد بأيدي المغول الذين دمروا وحرقوا وهدموا، تماماً كما يفعل مغول القرن الواحد والعشرين اليوم في غزة.

همجيتهم وحقدهم لم يكن لها حد، حتى أنهم أعادوا الكرة أكثر من مرة لاستكمال ما قد يكون فاتهم من تدمير وعربدة، لكن لماذا الجامعة الإسلامية في غزة تحديداً؟ ولماذا أصدر عبّاس أوامره لمرتزقته بتدميرها ليتباكى عليها من خارج فلسطين ويقول: "اتقوا الله في غزة" وهو المسؤول الوحيد عن كل ما يجري ليضيف لسجل المخازي الخاص به وصمة عار جديدة وليسجل التاريخ أن محمود رضا عباس عباس هو أول فلسطيني يأمر بتدمير صرح تعليمي فلسطيني يشهد القاصي والداني بتفوقه وإبداعه، لكن مرة أخرى لماذا؟ لماذا هذا الحقد؟

بالتأكيد ليس السبب أن دحلان الذي كان طالباً فاشلاً في الجامعة الإسلامية وتعرض للضرب المبرح على أيدي الطلبة عام 1985 لسلوكه المشين -وسبحان الله ما أشبه اليوم بالبارحة فهو ذاته صاحب ذات السلوك-، وبالتأكيد ليس السبب أن رابين سبق وأن قال: من أخطائنا في غزة أننا سمحنا بإنشاء الجامعة الإسلامية، وبالتأكيد ليس السبب تفوقها وتقدمها الذي أقر به المسؤول الأول عن الجريمة محمود رضا عباس عباس الذي امتدح ذات يوم الجامعة لتقدمها العلمي ودُهش مما رأى من تقدمها وتطورها؟ لماذا كل هذا الحقد والكره ضد هذا الصرح؟ لماذا؟

لن أتناول تاريخ الجامعة الإسلامية التي يكرهها هؤلاء بسبب كره أسيادهم في تل أبيب لها، ولن أتناول طوابير العلماء والأبناء النجباء والقادة الذين تخرجوا منها، ولن أتناول دورها في تعزيز صمود الشعب الفلسطيني ورفع مستوى الوعي والثقافة، ولن أتناول دورها العلمي المميز كأقدم جامعات القطاع والتي تحتضن اليوم 20 ألف طالب اعتدى عليهم المجرم محمود رضا عباس عباس من خلال إصدار الأوامر لمرتزقته بتدميرها، نعم هو مجرم، بل أبشع المجرمين هذا الذي يدمر ويقف ليتفرج على نتائج أفعاله دون أن يرف له جفن.

ما صرح به المصدر العباسي الدحلاني الأمني ظهر يوم 02/02/2007 يكشف بعضاً من أهداف التيار المجرم في الهجوم على الصرح العلمي، ولنقرأ سوياً تصريح الناطق باسم المرتزقة وكلاء الاحتلال حسب ما ورد:

"أعلن مصدر أمني فلسطيني ظهر اليوم "أن عناصر من حرس الرئاسة الفلسطينية تمكنوا من العثور على مصنع ومختبر لتصنيع صواريخ القسام والقذائف والعبوات الناسفة داخل أنفاق تحت مباني الجامعة الإسلامية بمدينة غزة".

وأكد المصدر "أن العثور على المصنع الذي يعود لكتائب القسام التابعة لحماس كان في أنفاق أسفل مباني الجامعة حيث تم العثور على عدد كبير من الأنفاق تحت مبني المختبرات والإدارة ومبني طبيبة داخل الجامعة".

وأكد المصدر أن الأجهزة الأمنية تحكم سيطرتها بشكل كامل على مباني الجامعة بالإضافة إلى السيطرة بشكل جيد على مبنى وزارة الداخلية القريبة من الجامعة مؤكدا أن عناصر الأمن الفلسطيني مازالت تقوم بعمليات تفتيش لأنحاء الجامعة والمنطقة المحيطة بها للبحث عن أنفاق أخرى ومصانع للأسلحة".

ترى هل كان هم عبّاس وهو يصدر أوامره باقتحام الجامعة الاسلامية هو الأسلحة والأنفاق؟ وهل باتت هذه في عرف أشباه الرجال جريمة تستوجب التباهي باكتشافها وتدميرها؟ ربما كانت كذلك تطبيقاً لخارطة الطريق التي يتخذها عباس ودحلان قرآناً منزلاً لا حياد عنه، فالخارطة في مرحلتها الأولى تتحدث عن تدمير البنى التحتية للإرهاب! ربما كانت الأنفاق هي ما تحت التحتية في نظر أشباه الرجال، لكن مع ذلك كان هناك هدف آخر لهذه الحملة البربرية العباسية الاجرامية.

لا يوجد ما يبرر هذه الهجمة إلا ما تسرب من أنباء أنه وصل لعبّاس وطغمته الفاشية أن جلعاد شاليط محتجز في الجامعة الاسلامية، ولهذا ترك دحلان الآمر العسكري الأوحد لقوات لحد في قطاع غزة كل المواقع الملتهبة التي تشهد اشتباكات، وأمر مرتزقته بالتوجه للجامعة الاسلامية، أملاً في العثور على شاليط وتسليمه دون مقابل كما وعد الشهر الماضي.

دخل المغول الهمج الجامعة الاسلامية بحثاً عن جلعاد فلما لم يجدوه فعلوا فعلتهم وجريمتهم النكراء، عادوا بخفي حنين بعد أن دمروا وأحرقوا، وخرجوا برواياتهم الطفولية عن الجنرالات الايرانيين وفتيات المتعة وهو ما نفاه عزام الأحمد رئيس كتلتهم النيابية في التشريعي، عادوا يجرون أذيال الخيبة والعار من فعلتهم، لكن عبّاس لم يكتف ودحلان لم يشبع، فكانت الأوامر بإعادة الهجوم مرة ثانية، ومرة ثالثة، لكن شاليط لم يكن هناك!!!

وبعد كل ذلك يخرج إمعتهم المسخ ليطالب حماس و"إسرائيل" بوقف اعتداءاتهم على مراكز الأمن!! أي وقاحة تلك وأي صفاقة هذه التي تنطلق من أبواقهم المأجورة التي أضحت وبجدارة أبواق المحتل بلسان عربي، أكاذيب اشاعات أباطيل هي ما يجيدون، ولا يضيرهم انكشاف كذبهم، ولا يعيبهم افتضاح أمرهم، ولا يهمهم خزيهم طالما حصلوا على بركات المحتل سيدهم وصاحب الأمر والنهي عندهم.

إحراق الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة وتدمير مبانيها ومختبراتها العلمية وتدميرمبانيها جريمة بشعة لا توازيها جريمة على الإطلاق، ويتحمل وزر هذه الجريمة النكراء الاحتلال الذي أعد خطة منذ نحو سنة لتدمير المؤسسات التعليمية والخيرية والخدماتية للشعب الفلسطيني بحجة تدمير البنى التحتية للإرهاب، وكذلك أذناب ووكلاء الاحتلال الذين يأتمرون بأوامره وينفذون مخططات ليعفوه من المسؤولية عن تلك الجرائم وعلى رأسهم محمود رضا عباس عباس ومحمد يوسف شاكر دحلان وباقي زمرة الفساد والإفساد.

إليك يا مغولي القرن الحادي والعشرين إليك يا محمود رضا عباس عباس، لو كان لديك ذرة كرامة واحدة، واحدة فقط لاغير، لتركت منصبك واستقلت على الفور، بعد أن دخلت التاريخ من مزبلته وأنت تدمر أكبر صرح تعليمي للشعب الفلسطيني، وبعد أن قبلت أن تكون وكيلاً للإحتلال الذي يغدق عليك عشرات الملايين من الدولارات والأسلحة والذخائر عبر المعابر التي يسيطر عليها وبإشرافه المباشر، لتشهرها في وجه شعبك الذي تشارك في تجويعه.

لكن هيهات هيهات أن تكون من صنف الرجال، وهيهات هيهات أن تهتم لمصلحة الشعب الفلسطيني، فهو شعب بنظرك حقير لا يستحق أن نتباكى على عذاباته، وهو شعب أقل من أن تعتذر له كما اعتذرت لدول العالم كبيرها وصغيرها، وهو شعب لا يستحق أن تلغي اجتماعاً مع ذابحيه كما فعلت بعد مجزرة شاطيء السودانية، وما قمت به من جريمة نكراء لا يستحق أن تعود من أجله لأرض الوطن لتتحمل مسؤوليتك المباشرة وتقدم للعدالة كمجرم مارق استغل منصبه في تدمير مقدرات الشعب بدلاً من الحفاظ عليها، هيهات هيهات يا محمود رضا عباس عباس!

لا بارك الله فيك ولا وفقك ولا سدد خطاك، وجعل جريمتك النكراء اليوم بتدمير الجامعة الإسلامية عذاباً دائماً مقيماً وخزي لك في الدنيا والآخرة، آمين يا رب العالمين.

ولا نامت أعين الجبناء. "

Iranian nuclear scientist ‘assassinated by Mossad’


"A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.
An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as “gas poisoning”. The Iranian reports did not say how or where Hassanpour was poisoned but his death was said to have been announced at a conference on nuclear safety.

Rheva Bhalla of Stratfor, the US intelligence company, claimed on Friday that Hassanpour had been targeted by Mossad and that there was “very strong intelligence” to suggest that he had been assassinated by the Israelis, who have repeatedly threatened to prevent Iran acquiring the bomb.

Hassanpour won Iran’s leading military research prize in 2004 and was awarded top prize at the Kharazmi international science festival in Iran last year....."

The New Iraq

The American proxy war in Gaza


A Palestinian man walks through a damaged building next to graffiti reading, "The Presidential guard walked through here" inside the Islamic University after it was attacked in Gaza, 3 February 2007.

An Excellent Article
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 3 February 2007

".....In the fevered minds of Bush administration ideologues, Palestine has become another front in what they conceive of as a new Cold War against "Islamofascism." They see Iran as the central target and proxy battles are being waged against a phantom enemy from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through Iraq into Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and ever onwards wherever Arabs and Muslims are to be found. In every case, local conflicts with specific histories are being escalated and marshalled into this grand narrative .

Mahmoud Abbas and Gaza warlord Muhammad Dahlan have become the willing proxies for the Palestine franchise of this wider project, as their tactics and loyalists' statements reveal......

Yet the fact that the Presidential Guard is receiving arms via Israel is common knowledge to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and has been talked about openly in the Israeli media for months. Since October, eight truckloads of AK-47 rifles and machine guns and several million rounds of ammunition have entered Gaza from Israel through the Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom crossings, according to a high-ranking officer of the Force-17 Fatah militia who conveyed this information to Hebron-based journalist Khaled Amayreh. Not all these guns go solely to the Presidential Guard; many are sold on to the highest bidder.

And just days ago, President Bush announced that he would transfer $86 million dollars in the near future to further boost Abbas.

In order to change the subject from the scandal of the Palestinian "presidency" receiving US arms through Israel to use against the Palestinian people, the Presidential Guard launched a counterattack against the Islamic University in Gaza shelling, burning and destroying parts of it. Abbas' officials claimed that their forces had arrested seven Iranian weapons experts working for Hamas, and labelled Hamas leaders "extremists" and "putschists." Fatah and Fatah-backed local radio even accused Hamas of burning down the Islamic University themselves in order to blacken Fatah's 'glorious image.' The allegations about Iranians were universally dismissed but they revealed the extent to which Abbas officials have adopted the Israeli and American paradigm as their own.

In several recent demonstrations, Dahlan loyalists have shouted "Shia, Shia," at Hamas supporters. This was perhaps supposed to draw attention to Iranian support for Hamas (the movement, like the rest of the Palestinian Muslim community, is Sunni) but this hateful sectarian incitement, hitherto unknown in Palestinian society, serves (for now) the wider strategic agenda of Abbas' and Dahlan's sponsors.

After Hizbullah defeated Israel last summer, the Lebanese Shia movement, backed by Iran, gained enormous prestige among the region's people, especially Palestinians, as an Arab nationalist and pan-Islamic movement, standing firm against Israeli aggression, in contrast to toothless, unpopular and corrupt governments. Hence the active promotion of Sunni fear of their Shia brethren is designed to limit the influence of Iran -- and serve up a good old-fashioned dose of divide and rule.....

Abbas is at last doing what Arafat was always urged to do, while Israel and the US watch with glee. As Ha'aretz explained, Israel felt no need to launch a large scale revenge operation against Gaza following the January 29 Eilat bombing: "When Fatah and Hamas are so good at killing each other, why should Israel intervene and spur them to close ranks against the common enemy?".....

The Quartet even "welcomed" US arming of the Presidential Guard, though in diplomatic doublespeak this was euphemized as "efforts to reform the Palestinian security sector and thus to help improve law and order for the Palestinian people."......

Israeli and American propaganda, now also adopted by the European Union, attempts to obscure the basic understanding that Palestine is the struggle of a colonized people for liberation. The policy of supporting a quisling group to fight as a proxy on behalf of empire, colonizer and occupier will only increase the bloodshed. But it will ultimately fail in Palestine as it did before in Northern Ireland, Southern Africa and Central and Southern America, and as it is failing in Iraq."

Who Can Stop the War?


Congress Has the Power, Do They Have the Will?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch

"Aside from winning, there aren't that many ways of ending wars. Governments pay attention when the troops mutiny, when there are riots outside recruiting offices, when there's revolution on the home front, when the money runs out.

In Vietnam the troops mutinied. Units shot their officers in the back or threw grenades into their tents. Navy ratings pushed aircraft off the side of aircraft carriers. In 1971 the Pentagon counted 503,926 "incidents of desertion" over the previous five years and reckoned that more than half of US ground forces openly opposed the war. At Christmastime in 1971 Vietnam Vets Against the War seized the Statue of Liberty, draping it with a banner demanding Bring our Brothers Home.


On the home front people fought the draft or simply fled it. In 1967 Maj. Gen. William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for Army intelligence, observed the great antiwar march from the roof of the Pentagon and concluded "the empire is coming apart at the seams." He reckoned there were too few reliable troops to fight the war in Vietnam and hold the line at home.

The elites, always prone to panic in such matters, thought revolution was around the corner. The left, in those days prone to optimism, thought the same thing. In the end, Congress cut off the money. Between 1970 and 1973, Congress enacted five restrictions on funding of U.S. military operations in Indochina......

So here we are, coming up on four years of war in Iraq. There's not going to be any significant mutiny among the troops. They are volunteers, furious though they may be at their extended tours of duty. There has been some good work against Army recruitment, but not at a level to panic anyone. The campuses are quiet. The churches? They might be protesting torture, but the vocations are dying. We need more nuns!

The respectable old antiwar "movement"-as opposed to real rabblerousers like Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin and Kathy Kelly-stirs into action once in a while for pleasant outings like last Saturday's in Washington, DC. For sure there was no chieftain in Army intelligence standing on the roof looking at the those marchers and thinking the Empire was on the verge of collapse.

The people don't like the war but this doesn't mean it won't go on so long as there's money to fund it. This brings us to Congress......

It's easy for Bush to veto a one-page bill decreeing no money for any troops above, say, 140,000. On February 5, Congress also begins to consider the half-trillion-dollar FY 2008 Defense Appropriations bill. If Congress installs curbs on the war in Iraq there, Bush can only veto the entire bill.

So Congress can deny Bush the money he wants to escalate the war or even continue it, through either of the two legislative routes described above. I doubt the resistance in Iraq is counting on it. They no doubt think it's up to them to get the troops out, and that's probably a realistic assessment."

Half-century on, some see Iraq parallels in Algerian war


A Good Article

"ALGIERS, Algeria — First the Pentagon plugged the movie, now President Bush is reading the book. The subject is Algeria's war of independence against France, in which a Western power struggled with an insurgency and international opposition.

Some see disturbing parallels between Algeria in 1957 to Iraq in 2007. Others say they are different, but that there are lessons to be learned from the war that hastened the end of France's empire.

Bush says he is reading A Savage War of Peace, British historian Alistair Horne's celebrated 1977 account of the war. And shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon was recommending its commanders see Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 movie, The Battle of Algiers.

A key difference between the two wars, historians agree, is that the Algerians did not have Iraq's sectarian divisions. Another difference is that France treated Algeria as an integral part of its territory, with almost a million European settlers, most of whom vigorously opposed any French withdrawal.


Parallels start with the urban terror campaign launched by the FLN, Algeria's National Liberation Front. As in Iraq, local police and administrators made easier targets. "After the first month of the war the FLN realized they couldn't beat the French army so they concentrated on soft targets," said author Horne in a telephone interview. "It meant the French army, instead of going on the offensive, had to protect the police, and both of them — the army and the police — were to some extent neutralized. And I think this is exactly what's happening in Iraq."

Zohra Drif Bitat, now 70 and a member of the Algerian Senate, planted bombs for the independence movement in the capital, Algiers. But that, she insists, did not make her a terrorist. Instead, she regards herself and her former comrades as freedom fighters — and so she fails to see what U.S. officials fighting terrorism in Iraq can learn from the Algerian experience. "They want to understand how one becomes a terrorist," Drif Bitat said. "But that's the fundamental mistake they have made because we were combatants on the same level as the GIs in the American army. We were members of the National Liberation Army."

Drif Bitat joined the FLN's underground Algiers network as a 20-year-old law student in 1955. The group was led by Saadi Yacef from the Casbah, then the densely populated Arab quarter of Algiers.

On Sept. 30, 1956, Yacef sent Drif Bitat with two other women to place bombs in places frequented by Europeans. The event is depicted in Pontecorvo's movie, in which Yacef starred as himself. "They were reluctant at first, saying to us that civilians are going to die," Yacef, 79 and also a senator, recalled. He then reminded the women of an attack claimed by settlers which left more than 70 Algerians dead. "At that point they agreed to plant the bombs."

Drif Bitat's bomb did the most damage, killing three and wounding more than 50. "What was unfortunate, what troubled me at the end of it all, was to see a boy or a girl with a severed leg or arm," said Yacef. "But blood calls for blood ... I told myself that the French landed in Algeria by force and they must be pushed out by force."

As the rebellion gathered pace, France sent paratroopers into the capital on Jan. 7, 1957, and the Battle of Algiers began.

Yacef continued to direct attacks from hiding until he and Drif Bitat were finally arrested in September 1957, near the battle's end. But the French army's claim of victory was to prove premature. Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero who became France's president in 1958, decided that his country's time in Algeria was up, and in 1962 it withdrew. But not fast enough, says Horne. "De Gaulle got out with nothing. He lost everything because he let it drag on too long and this to my mind is the big danger in Iraq," said Horne. "I just don't see how the Americans can get out now because the effect of total chaos would be devastating. On the other hand they can't stay too long."

Then, as now, the stakes were regarded as bigger than just one country. The Soviet Union was vying with the West for influence in North African states, and oil had been discovered in the Algerian Sahara in 1956. Today, the fear is that a withdrawal from Iraq will destabilize the entire Middle East.

The French security forces' use of torture caused an international outcry, echoed when the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public. The legacy of the Algerian war continued to poison French politics. Pontecorvo's acclaimed documentary-style movie did not appear until 1966 and was banned for years in France, in part because of its graphic torture scenes. "Certainly the use of torture helped them win the battle of Algiers but I think it cost them the war," said Horne.

Drif Bitat says that because of the brutal French tactics, "those who could have hesitated or collaborated with the French said to themselves, 'I'm returning to my own people."' "We had will and determination," she said. "You kill us but I know that my brother and sister will arrive and continue the fight. That is what is happening in Iraq."

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who recommended A Savage War of Peace to Bush, said recently on PBS' Charlie Rose Show that he did not believe "that the French experience could be applied precisely to the United States."

"But I thought there were enough similarities and enough complexities and enough tragedy for the president to gain a perspective on his own period.""

AIPAC “Money People” and the Iran Attack


By Kurt Nimmo

".....However, in the context of the impending Iran attack, correcting the deliberate and thus tactical misrepresentations attributed to Ahmadinejad would be nothing less than an exercise in futility, as the political establishment and the corporate media continue to “broadcast this false statement to the masses,” as Norouzi explains, “on an almost daily basis.”

For instance, consider Hillary Clinton’s recent speech, delivered to the AIPAC gathered.

“Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel’s greatest threats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that ‘no option can be taken off the table’ when dealing with that nation,” reports the Washington Post. “U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table,” including the “option” of slaughtering Iranian innocents. In addition to repeating the nuclear bomb canard, Clinton exploited the baseless accusation of Holocaust denial. “To deny the Holocaust places Iran’s leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists,” the latter prosecuted and imprisoned in Europe for the crime of historical research, now considered “despicable” bigotry if it questions the Holocaust orthodoxy.

One cannot help but ask if Clinton is running for political office in the United States or Israel. But then, as Wesley Clark made the mistake of stating during an interview with Arianna Huffington in response to a United Press International column by Arnaud de Borchgrave, “New York money people” are providing “office seekers” with an infusion of cash. “The phrase ‘New York money people’ struck unpleasant chords with many pro-Israel activists. They interpreted it as referring to the Jewish community, which is known for its significant financial donations to political candidates,” writes Nathan Guttman.....

Since 1987, AIPAC—formerly the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs—has increased its influence to such a degree that it runs the foreign policy of the United States, particularly in relation to issues concerning the Middle East. As the parade of above mentioned Democrat and Republican presidential hopefuls before the “money people” of AIPAC demonstrates, the lobby not only “has gained power to influence a presidential candidate’s choice of staff,” but indeed has the influence to decide presidential elections with the persuasive rattle of its “ATM for American politicians.”....."

Fatah retracts fabricated report on Iranians in Gaza

"Gaza - Feeling the heat of the popular disgruntlement over the storming and burning of the Islamic University at the hands of the PA presidential guards Friday, Fatah faction retracted the story it had fabricated on Iranian presence in the University to justify the heinous attack.

PA presidential guards and Fatah faction alleged that they arrested seven Iranian officers in the attack on the University and that an eighth had committed suicide.

Azzam Al-Ahmed, the head of Fatah bloc in the Palestinian legislator alleged, “No official statement from Fatah or the office of the PA chief had mentioned the presence of the Iranians”, and described the news as mere “rumors”.

Ahmed’s statement reflects the volume of confusion amidst the mutiny trend in Fatah faction.

Meanwhile, Hamas Movement urged its cadres and the Palestinian public to defend local mosques and worshippers in Gaza Strip at all costs.

Elements of the mutiny trend stormed a number of local mosques and shelled others, killing and wounding tens of worshippers over the past few days, including the massacre of Al-Hedaya Mosque last week that disgusted the Palestinian public.

“Hamas along with Islamic and national factions in the Palestinian arena will relentlessly block those mischievous groups, and will stand up for the defense of the mosques at all costs”, a statement issued by the Movement and a copy of which was faxed to the PIC affirmed.

A number of mosques in Khan Younis district, south of Gaza Strip, were attacked by those hooligans, killing a number of pious Palestinian citizens who attempted to block them.

In a related matter, Palestinian citizen Khaled Al-Najjar, a cadre of the executive force of the PA interior ministry, was kidnapped and tortured at the hands of the PA security forces loyal to Abbas. He is reportedly detained and interrogated in one of those forces’ headquarters in Gaza.

In Nablus city, Fatah vandals calling themselves “Fatah executive force” kidnapped Palestinian citizen Fayez Al-Bishtawi, 30, Saturday noon. Bishtawi owns a computer store in the city."

U.S. to support up to 10,000 extra Abbas troops


Reuters

An Explosive Story

"The United States will expand assistance to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to include about 8,500 members of his national security forces and possibly 1,000 Fatah fighters based in Jordan, U.S. documents show.

Providing non-lethal equipment and training to units of Abbas's National Security Forces, and possibly the Jordan-based Badr Brigade could increase Washington's role in the power struggle between Abbas's Fatah faction and the governing Hamas movement.

U.S. assistance has largely been limited until now to around 4,000 members of Abbas's presidential guard. But documents obtained by Reuters on Saturday showed that the U.S. government's $86.4 million security assistance program could cover at least 13,500 troops loyal to Abbas.

The National Security Forces (NSF) is the largest security force under Abbas's control and is viewed by many Palestinians to be the equivalent of an army, though it is poorly trained and equipped compared to the smaller presidential guard.

Under the U.S. security program, $76.4 million will fund "projects to transform and strengthen elements of the Palestinian Authority's security structure, specifically the National Security Forces and Presidential Guard in an effort to improve public order and fight terror in the West Bank and Gaza," the documents said.


"These projects have been developed in coordination with the office of the PA president (Abbas), and the overall plan enjoys the support of the government of Israel," said the documents, marked "sensitive but unclassified."

Another $10 million would fund security improvements at the Karni commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Western officials involved in the program said security service members who participate in the U.S.-funded program will undergo a vetting process to ensure they are qualified and have no ties to militant groups.

Hamas has denounced U.S. security assistance as part of a coup against its government. Hamas gunmen on Thursday attached a truck convey in Gaza that it said was meant to resupply Abbas's presidential guard, triggering a wave of fighting.

U.S. officials say they will only provide training and non-lethal equipment to forces loyal to Abbas. Guns and ammunition are being supplied by key U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, with Israeli approval, Israeli officials say.

Under the $86.4 million U.S. program, $35.5 million will be used to provide non-lethal equipment, including riot gear and communications equipment, to about 8,500 members of Abbas's National Security Forces.

Another $15 million in U.S. funds would provide at least one NSF unit, estimated to have 668 members, with an initial six months of training to counter "civil disorder," most likely at a facility in Jordan, the documents say.

The funds will be used "in support of NSF deployment throughout the West Bank and Gaza so that the NSF may establish a visible public presence, improve public order and help improve border security," the documents said.

The United States expected other donors to provide extra training, the documents said, but gave no further details.

Palestinian officials estimate that the National Security Forces have as many as 40,000 members. Western diplomats say the number of active members is closer to 20,000.

BADR BRIGADE

The $86.4 million also includes $25.9 million to provide non-lethal equipment to Abbas's elite presidential guard, which is expected to grow to 4,700 members with U.S. help near-term. Palestinian officials say the force could eventually top 10,000.

The documents said up to $8 million of these funds may be used to provide equipment to the Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force, "in the event of a deployment in Gaza." Badr would fall under the presidential guard's operational command.

The United States and Israel have backed a proposal by Abbas to let about 1,000 members of the Badr Brigade, into the Palestinian territories, though no date has been set.

Diplomats say Abbas's military build-up was meant to counter strides by Hamas in smuggling more powerful weapons into Gaza for its fast-growing "Executive Force" and armed wing.

Some analysts have warned that fighting between Hamas and Fatah could turn into a proxy war, with the United States supporting Abbas and Iran backing Hamas."

Iran: A War Is Coming


By John Pilger

"The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of "buying time" for its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a "surge" of American troops in Iraq, George W. Bush identified Iran as his real target. "We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria," he said. "And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." "Networks" means Iran.....

As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and domestic and foreign opposition grows, "neocon" fanatics such as Vice President Cheney believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring. For public consumption, there are potent myths. In concert with Israel and Washington's Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites say their "strategy" is to end Iran's nuclear threat. In fact, Iran possesses not a single nuclear weapon nor has it ever threatened to build one; the CIA estimates that, even given the political will, Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest......

The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear ambitions," just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonizing that has become standard practice......

The one piece of "solid evidence" is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization, was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorized the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East.....

The well-informed Arab Times in Kuwait says Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by Cruise missiles launched in the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on 24 January, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilization. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. Posing as victims, the Israelis will suffer some tolerable damage and then an outraged US will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian hysteria, leaks, disinformation etcetera . . . It remains unclear whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war."......

Can this really be happening again, less than four years after the invasion of Iraq which has left some 650,000 people dead? I wrote virtually this same article early in 2003; for Iran now read Iraq then. And is it not remarkable that North Korea has not been attacked? North Korea has nuclear weapons. That is the message, loud and clear, for the Iranians......"

Finally! A Decent Article By Fisk About Lebanon


Please spare me the word 'terrorist'

By Robert Fisk

"So it was back to terror, terror, terror this week. The "terrorist" Hizbollah was trying to destroy the "democratically elected government" of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. The "terrorist" Hamas government cannot rule Palestine. Iranian "terrorists" in Iraq are going to be gunned down by US troops.

My favourite line of the week came from the "security source" - just how one becomes a "security source" remains a mystery to me -- who announced: "Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror... There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public." Well, you could have fooled me.

Lebanon is as good a place as any to find out what a load of old tosh the "terror" merchants talk. For here it is that the hydra-headed monster of Iran is supposedly stalking the streets of Beirut, staging a coup against Mr Siniora and his ministers.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, is the man Israel spent all last summer trying - vainly, of course - to kill, his black-bearded, turbaned appearance on Hizbollah's own TV station a source of fury to both Ehud Olmert and - nowadays - to Siniora's men in government.

Now it's true that Nasrallah - an intelligent, former military commander of Hizbollah in southern Lebanon - is developing a rather odd cult of personality. His massive features tower over the Beirut airport highway, a giant hand waving at motorists in both directions. And these days, you can buy Hizbollah T-shirts and Nasrallah key chains. But somehow "terror" is not quite the word that comes to mind.

This is partly because the tens of thousands of Shia Muslims whom Hizbollah represents are staging a social revolution rather than a coup, a mass uprising of the poor who have traditionally been ignored by the great and the good of Lebanese society.


The men in their tent city downtown are a powerful symbol in Lebanon. They are smoking their hooker pipes and playing cards and sleeping rough next to the shining new city which Rafiq Hariri rebuilt from the ruins of Beirut - a city to impress foreigners but one in which the south Lebanese poor could not afford to buy a cup of coffee.

Hariri's theory - or at least this is how he explained it to me before his murder - was that if the centre of Beirut was reconstructed, the money which it generated would trickle down to the rest of Lebanon.

But it didn't trickle. The bright lights of downtown Beirut were enjoyed by the rich and purchased by the Saudis and admired by the likes of Jacques Chirac but they were not for the Shia. For them, Hizbollah provided the social services and the economic foundation of its part of Lebanon as well as the military spearhead to strike at Israel and demand the return of Shebaa Farms.

The Lebanese government may have its troops mixed in with the new UN force in the south but no one doubts that Hizbollah remain in their villages, as powerful and as influential as ever. Harirism, it seems, failed and now Hariri's old friend Siniora - who, by the way, was never elected (he was appointed to the prime minister's job although you'd never know if from watching Western television) - has returned from Paris with millions of dollars to sit once more in his little "green zone", surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers and, outside the gates of his serail, by the poor of southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut.

Hizbollah's electoral partners are also interesting. General Michel Aoun - whom the Americans have not yet got round to calling a "terrorist" - is the Christian leader who allows Nasrallah to claim that the opposition is non-sectarian. Aoun's supporters were involved in pitched battles with Samir Geagea's Phalangists last week and what was striking was how poor many of Aoun's Christian supporters also appeared to be. Indeed, Aoun was himself born in the same southern slums of Beirut which is Hizbollah's power base and his constant refrain - that the government is corrupt - is beginning to take hold among the disenfranchised Christian communities in the east of Beirut.

The fact that Aoun is also a little cracked does not change this. Even when this week he produced a doctored photograph supposedly showing an armed Phalangist on the streets - the image was of a Hizbollah gunman, originally taken during last summer's war but stuck on to a photograph of crowds on a north Beirut roadway - his loyal supporters did not desert him. Nestling beside their tents in central Beirut are canvas homes containing Lebanese communists - how friendly the old hammer and sickle seems these days - and a host of lesser groups which may or may not come under Syria's patronage.

Of course, the crisis in Lebanon is also about Iran and Syria, especially Iran's determination to damage or destroy any Middle East government which has earned America's friendship. In the growing, overheated drama being played out between Washington and Tehran (and Israel, of course), Lebanon is another board game for the two sides to use. America thus lined up to defend Lebanon's democracy - though it didn't care a damn about it when Israel bombarded the country last summer - while Iran continues to support Hizbollah whose government ministers resigned last year, provoking the current crisis.

Nasrallah is said to have been personally shocked by the extent of the violence and hatred manifested in last week's miniature civil war in which both Sunni and Shia Muslims used guns against each other for the first time.

But they too emerged from the slums to do battle with their co-religionists and I rather suspect that - when this latest conflict is over - there will have to be a serious evaluation of the explosive nature of Lebanon's poverty belts, a re-examination of a country whose super-wealthy launder the money which never reaches the poor, whose French restaurants and Italian designer shops are for the princes of the Gulf, whose government - however democratically elected (and Washington still doesn't seem to understand that sectarian politics mean that Lebanon cannot have a normal democracy) - seems so out of touch with its largest religious community.

But as the story of Lebanon continues, please spare me the word "terrorist"."

By Naser Jafari

A Symphony of Silent Voices


By Layla Anwar

"......Mayssaloon, my very close relative, a beautiful young woman whose name means gaiety, got married three years ago to a nice shi'a boy. They were happy until...
Mayssaloon gave birth 3 days ago at home in Al Azamiyah ( a predominantly sunni neighborhood - here we go again...)
When she told us the good news about her pregnancy, our faces dropped.
My first reaction was " How could you ?" but I bit my tongue and said nothing.
Then I realized how "nazi" it was of me to even think that way. She is newly wed and she wants a family. For her life has to go on and she had hopes ...until... until little Hassan was born.
Like many women in Iraq and in Baghdad in particular, any pregnancy has to end in a forced cesarian in a hospital (if you can call it a hospital that is - only God knows the rate of septicemia after surgeries today in Baghdad) or deal with it alone at home.
Al Azamiyah has been under very heavy shelling for the past four days, shelling from the iranian backed militias in their rabid campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Again , no water, no electricity, no food. Mayssaloon gave birth at home, she was hemorrhaging..no midwife available. Someone finally brought in a nurse. She said take her to the hospital now.
Again, her father braved the mortar deadly shells and took her to the nearest hospital.
Impossible, they said . No beds available, too many injured already...go home.
Mayssaloon and little Hassan made it home , but Hassan was too pale and hardly breathing and Mayssaloon was heavily bleeding. They also noticed a strange looking growth on his tiny body.
Grandpa took him to a doctor, who ran some blood tests, but by then it was too late...Hassan eclipsed like a frail small flame...Hassan is gone for ever...and Mayssaloon is still bleeding...
He uttered a tiny cry and went.
Mayssaloon sits in bed all day and all night in the cold and in the darkness , her silence is deafening and when she speaks , she just cries loudly, sighs and goes back to mute .
And so it goes ...for the silent voices in Iraq.

Postscript : As I was writing this, I remembered a letter received from a western friend of mine. She just go pregnant and was looking foward to feel her birth pangs , an affirmation of her feminity. She checked herself in into a very special clinic so she can give birth in a warm cosy water pool, the natural way,hence diminishing the traumas of childbirth to her and her child.
I can't but manage an ironic smile now.
Where is Condi Rice, the midwife of the New Middle East? We just had Death Birth pangs here...in a pool of warm blood."

The Islamic University In Gaza After "Liberation" By Abbas' Contras.
Mohammad Pinochet Dahlan Demanded More Liberation.

Friday, February 2, 2007

Syria: Give Refuge to Palestinians Fleeing Threats in Iraq


US and Other Countries Should Help Resettle Refugees

"Syria should immediately reopen its border to Iraqi Palestinian refugees fleeing deadly attacks against their community, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on the international community, and the United States in particular, to provide financial assistance to Syria to help it host the Palestinian refugees, and to share the burden of this refugee problem by offering third-country resettlement opportunities to Palestinian refugees in Syria.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, Palestinian refugees in Iraq have increasingly become targets of violence and persecution, with abductions of scores of Palestinian men in the past week. In recent months, Shi`a militant groups have murdered dozens of Palestinian refugees and have repeatedly leafleted Palestinian neighborhoods threatening further killings unless the Palestinians leave.

The Syrian government, however, has refused to allow the Palestinians entry into the country, leaving the refugees stranded at the border. Hundreds more are expected to attempt to make the journey.

It’s hard to understand why Syria has provided refuge to nearly a million Iraqi refugees but is shutting the door on hundreds of Palestinians also fleeing Iraq,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Syrian government’s mistreatment of these Palestinian refugees contrasts sharply with its declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

Under customary international law, Syria has a legal obligation not to return refugees to persecution or serious harm, and to allow asylum seekers fleeing widespread human rights abuses and generalized violence to enter the country, at least temporarily, to be screened for refugee status. Human Rights Watch urged Syria to abide by its legal duty to admit immediately the stranded Palestinians at its border.

Consistent with respect for the right to return, Israel should respect requests by the UNHCR to allow those Palestinian refugees from Iraq with origins in Gaza to return to the Gaza Strip.

Finally, Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government and the US-led Multi-National Forces in Iraq to take immediate steps to improve security for Palestinian refugees in Iraq and end discriminatory and abusive practices by Iraqi officials......"

***

More hypocrisy from a cynical and despicable regime.

The Twilight Zone / By the book



Life and death are in the hands of the checkpoint, yet everyone is just following rules.

By Gideon Levy

"There's no question about it - everything was done by the book. The gate was locked at 7 P.M. and 16,000 people, residents of the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan, were imprisoned behind it until 6 A.M. That's the procedure. A woman who wants to cross the checkpoint at night has to go on foot, to wait until a female soldier comes to do a body check, even if she is about to give birth; that, too, is procedure. And only cars with permits are allowed to enter Nablus, even if dying people are sitting inside them; that is also according to procedure. No soldier deviated from the procedure, everything was done by the book, the book of the occupation.

That is how it happened that a cancer patient was delayed for about an hour and a half at the Hawara checkpoint, until he died in a taxi that was not allowed to enter Nablus, a taxi in which he was trying to get from the hospital to his home, his final request. That is also what happened when the young woman in labor was forced to stand in the cold and the rain for about half an hour and to make her way on foot for several hundred meters while in labor. That's the procedure......"

مئات البنادق والقذائف والعتاد حمولة الشاحنات التي ضبطت


بعد أن تم تفريغ حمولتها بالكامل
مصادر مقربة من "القسام": مئات البنادق والقذائف والعتاد حمولة الشاحنات التي ضبطت

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أفادت مصادر مقربة من "كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام"، الذراع العسكري لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" إن الشاحنات الثلاث، التي ضبطتها الكتائب، أمس الخميس (1/2)، كانت محملة بمئات قطع الرشاشات من نوع "إم 16" المطورة، التي يستخدمها الجيش الصهيوني، كما شملت مئات صناديق الذخائر، بالإضافة إلى مئات قذائف "آر بي جي" المطورة.

وقالت المصادر لـ "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام"، إن الشاحنات التي تم تفريغها بالكامل احتوت أيضاً على عتاد عسكري، شمل سترات واقية من الرصاص وأحذية ومعدات عسكرية مختلفة.

يذكر أن الشاحنات الثلاث، التي تم ضبطها هي جزء من أحد عشر شاحنة، وصلت من إحدى الدول الخليجية كمساعدات عسكرية لتقوية قوات محمود عباس رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية، ومليشيات ما يُعرف بالتيار الانقلابي في حركة "فتح"، الذي يشار إلى محمد دحلان باعتباره أبرز قادة التيار، لمواجهة حركة حماس.

من جهة أخرى؛ أفادت مصادر مقربة من حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" أن كتائب القسام والقوة التنفيذية، التي سيطرت على عدد من المواقع الأمنية والمقرات التابعة لقوات عباس، ضبطت كميات كبيرة من الأسلحة والذخائر كانت معدة لمواجهة حركة حماس. "


What A Sweetheart!

BRING IT ON!


U.S. loses fourth copter in Iraq in two weeks

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A U.S. Apache helicopter went down in Iraq on Friday, Pentagon officials said, the fourth helicopter to crash in two weeks.

The U.S. officials could not say whether the AH-64 crashed or was brought down by insurgent fire or whether there were casualties.

An official with Iraq's Interior Ministry, however, said earlier Friday that Iraqi soldiers in Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, reported a U.S. helicopter was seen going down after coming under insurgent fire.

Witnesses later told The Associated Press that the wreckage was spotted near a fuel storage complex in Mashhada, near Taji, and that U.S. troops had sealed off the area.

Nineteen Americans were killed in the three previous incidents....."

THE MIDWIFE OF DEATH TAKES HER CREATIVE DESTRUCTION TO GAZA



Smoke rises from a building within the Islamic University, affiliated to the Hamas movement, which was hit during factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 2, 2007.(AP)


Smoke rises from a building inside the Islamic University in Gaza February 2, 2007. REUTERS


Smoke is seen after an explosion shook the Islamic University in Gaza City. Fighting between warring Palestinian factions was raging across the Gaza Strip, torpedoing a truce aimed at bringing an end to violence that has left 21 people dead in 24 hours.(AFP)


A youth watches as black smoke billows following an explosion at the Islamic University in Gaza City.(AFP)


A Palestinian youth runs in front of a burning building at the al-Quds open university after it was attacked by gunmen in Gaza January 2, 2007. Fighting between Palestinian factions escalated across Gaza on Friday, killing at least 11 people as Fatah set the Islamic University ablaze. (REUTERS)

Dr. Mona El-Farra From Inside Gaza



Situation Update
Friday, February 02, 2007

"The situation over the past few days has been very bad, we have no electricity now and I have dictated this post to my son in the UK for distribution.

The infighting has escalated and shattered the truce. Hamas ambushed a fatah convoy bringing some sort of supplies to the Presidential guard (either logistical supplies or arms?? no one can know for sure), they have also been attacking the presidential compound overnight with a variety of weapons (including mortars and rockets) This is just outside my flat and has caused me great distress (, Some of the explosives have been falling a few feet from my doorstep. Presidential forces on the other hand stormed the Islamic University in an alleged search for arms and they claim to have arrested seven Iranian "military experts".

It looks very bleak. I am worried that the western powers want to support a coup This can only take Palestine back to a peace process similar to Oslo that serves Isreal and the west more than it serves Palestinian liberation.

On a personal level, the past 24 hours have been disturbing because I have been separated from my daughter Sondos by the fighting. She was visiting her sister half a mile away and I have no way of reaching her safely. I am stuck in my flat with my sister, a friend of mine and her 10 year old niece. We were coming back from Khanyounis where we were visiting my mother for her 85th birthday.

From Gaza with love"

U.S. Backing for Fatah Stirs New Conflict

".....The fighting began in the afternoon when four truckloads of supplies entering from Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing were intercepted by Hamas fighters, who claimed that they had commandeered an arms shipment to the Presidential Guard, a U.S.-backed security force loyal to Abbas.....

In late December, an Israeli-approved arms shipment of 2,000 rifles, 20,000 magazines and two million rounds of ammunition from Egypt passed through the same Kerem Shalom crossing into the Gaza strip.

The resumption of violence comes as Washington announced plans to deliver a further 86.4 million dollars to back President Abbas.

Hamas officials have denounced Washington's involvement in training and financing Fatah security forces. Spokesman Ismayil Radwan said in a public speech that it was Washington's intention to "fuel a civil war in the Palestinian arena."

Mouin Rabbani, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that the United States is seeking to build Abbas's Presidential Guard into the leading Palestinian security force.

"It was developed to take on the Executive Force of Hamas," he told IPS. Rabbani said that the United States is preparing for the long haul, rather than trying to spark the clashes that Gaza is immediately experiencing.

"This is not a direct instigation by the Americans, because they are not yet convinced that Fatah are ready to take on Hamas," Rabbani said. "But they are beginning to pump significant amounts of weapons, training and funds in the hope that Fatah will prevail in the eventual conflict."

For its part, Washington has acknowledged that it is training Abbas's Presidential Guard in urban warfare tactics in the West Bank city Jericho under the guidance of Lt. General Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In an interview in December, Dayton told the Israeli daily Yehidot Ahronot, "We are involved in building up the Presidential Guard, instructing it, assisting it to build itself up, and giving them ideas." Dayton denied the Force was being groomed to confront Hamas.

In December 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which explicitly denounced the elected Hamas leadership. The Act seeks to bolster the Palestinian National Authority under Fatah's partnership.....

The Islamist movement Hamas ended Fatah's 40-year rule of the Palestinian political scene when it won parliamentary elections in January 2006. A strict U.S.-led sanctions regime was imposed when Hamas formed a government in March. This is, according to the United Nations, the first sanctions regime of its kind imposed on an occupied population. The sanctions regime has worsened the situation in Gaza that was already being described as a humanitarian crisis by UN agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP)......

"The kids used to play 'Palestinians versus Israelis'; now they play 'Fatah versus Hamas'," said the father of two young children......"

By Joel Pett

As US power fades, it can't find friends to take on Iran

Washington has exaggerated Tehran's capabilities and intentions in Iraq. It is confused and frustrated

Jonathan Steele
Friday February 2, 2007
The Guardian

"......The real purpose of Washington's heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the "who lost Iraq?" debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up, Bush's people will name its fall guys. Number one will be the Democrats, for failing to fund the war adequately and allowing the "enemy" to take comfort from the sapping of American will. Number two will be Iran for its alleged arming of militias and insurgents. Number three will be Syria for allowing suicide bombers through Damascus airport and into Iraq.

The second purpose of Washington's anti-Iranian claims, as the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recently suggested, is to prepare a case for a US military strike on Iran. It will be described as defensive, just as the first attacks on North Vietnam two generations ago were falsely said to be an answer to the other side's aggression.

There could be a third aim: a desire to influence the internal Iranian debate. A senior US official stated in London this week that the Iranian government was a monolith and "we try to discern differences within the Iranian regime at our peril". That may not be the majority view within the administration. Ratcheting up accusations against Iran's revolutionary guards who are close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a device to make a case for moderates like the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. He appears to favour a deal with Washington rather than confrontation.

The safest conclusion is that Washington remains confused about what Iran is doing, and frustrated by its own inability to find allies to support a response. All options are being prepared, along with their "justifications". The International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual survey rightly pointed out this week that US power is fading. It can shape an agenda but not implement it globally......"

A massacre and a new civil war

By Pepe Escobar

".......In this sorry attempt by the Iraqi government to create a one-size-fits-all conspiracy (Saddamists, al-Qaeda and Iranian fanatics all in cahoots), the main problem is how to fit in current US anti-Iran hysteria. The Mahdawiya have never had anything to do with Iran. This is a nationalist Iraqi group: no wonder they are fiercely opposed to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is Iranian, born in Sistan-Balochistan province.

According to Abu al-Hasan, a Mahdawiya member close to Sarkhi, quoted by London-based Al-Hayat, the accusations of a planned ayatollah massacre in Najaf are nothing but lies. Hasan said what happened was that Iraqi police tried to arrest Sarkhi, his followers revolted, and that led to the massacre.

Religiously, it's important to note that the Shi'ite clerical aristocracy in Najaf - of which Sistani is the epitome - does not like being challenged, be it by the Sadrists or, worse even, by a splinter group. In parallel, Arab Shi'ites all over southern Iraq prefer to trust an Arab marja (senior spiritual leader) in Najaf, and not a Persian (Sistani)......

Both the Hawatim and Khazaali tribes are fiercely Iraqi Arab nationalist. They are fiercely against both the SCIRI and Da'wa - that is, the governments of Najaf and Baghdad, which for them are puppets of Iran. The Mahdawiya for its part was based in Zarga. They could have easily been set up as the fall guys in the massacre. Nothing could be more convenient than blaming it all on a fanatical, anti-government Shi'ite cult. But a consensus emerging among southern Iraqi tribes is that the massacre was a Baghdad-concocted operation designed to torpedo an increasingly popular, non-sectarian Sunni and Shi'ite Iraqi nationalist alliance (anti-US and anti-Iran).

The modus operandi was clear: Shi'ites supported by Iran (the current Iraqi government) screaming "al-Qaeda!" and used the Pentagon to kill Arab nationalist Shi'ites. In this scenario, everything in Iraq that is not SCIRI or Da'wa is bundled into the "terrorist" bag. This pattern is bound to be replicated before, during and after the US surge.....

What is certain is that the Maliki-Hakim alliance will continue to deploy its US-trained Iraqi army and police in further massacres, advised by the dreaded Scorpion commando squad, which is funded by US dollars, and responding to the head of Iraqi intelligence. In this sense, the Najaf massacre is also a classic case of the "Salvador option" in its Iraqified version: or how the lessons of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s are useful for the "New Middle East".

Furthermore, the massacre also signals that the Pentagon is now linked to killing Arab Shi'ite tribes. If this is true, it is a big mistake. Sistani does not control them anymore. This means more and more revengeful, nationalist Arab Shi'ites will be amplifying another anti-US/Baghdad guerrilla front.

Take the example of the Beni Tamim, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite tribe. Their sheikh, 70-year-old Hamid al-Suhail, was killed one month ago in Baghdad by a death squad. Revenge is inevitable. Anti-US and anti-Baghdad guerrillas in southern Iraq have been spreading like wildfire since November.

The model is to be found in modern history: the Shi'ite resistance that from the 1920s to the 1930s fought and kicked out the British. Southern Shi'ite tribal chiefs are going for a united, Sunni and Shi'ite muqawama (resistance). The Bush administration is reaping the kind of Iraqi chaos it craves: yet one more civil war - of (Arab) Shi'ites against ("Persian") Shi'ites. "

Thursday, February 1, 2007


This Armored Vehicle Belonged to Abbas' "Presidential Guard." It Must Have Been Part of Condoleezza's Generous "Aid Package" to Her Sock Puppet.

We Certainly Did Not See Palestinian Armored Vehicles When The IOF Was Slaughtering Entire Palestinian Families In Beit Hanoun. But Now, These Vehicles Are Being Used Against The Palestinians Themselves. The Midwife Of Death Must Be Smiling On Abbas Now.

Back To The Future


"......The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization....."

These words were written in 1982 by the Israeli Oded Yinon. Read the entire essay and judge for yourself if what is happening now is a series of "mistakes" or is just mere coincidence.

Bush's Trash Talk About Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

"Since President Bush’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, the White House has manufactured a crisis that pits the United States against Iran. In what looks like the military and diplomatic equivalent of a full court press, Washington has unleashed a barrage of threats, maneuvers and limited military actions that seem calculated to set the United States on a collision course with Iran in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. All in all, it is an exceedingly risky and dangerous gambit.....

That’s not to say that Iran does not have multiple, and powerful, ties to virtually all of Iraq’s Shiite political elite and to some Kurdish warlords. Iran provides cash, arms and assistance to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose Badr Brigade militia operates as a death squad on behalf of the U.S.-allied government of Iraq. It has a vast presence in Iraq’s Shiite south, building ties to private militias, tribes and urban political machines. It has massive economic ties to Iraq, and, in a recent New York Times interview, Iran’s ambassador in Iraq announced that his country would open a branch of Iran’s leading bank in downtown Baghdad and “offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment and advisers for ‘the security fight.’” Iran has hosted visits from Iraq’s president, prime minister, foreign minister and other top Iraqi officials. But, it must be stressed, it is richly ironic that nearly all of Iran’s ties in Iraq are with Iraqi political forces who are America’s nominal allies – not to the armed resistance fighting the U.S. occupation.

Were this not so deadly serious, it would be farcical. One goal, apparently, of U.S. threats and bluster against Iran in Iraq is an attempt to break ties between Iran and, say, SCIRI – even though SCIRI is organically tied to Tehran and even though it was created in 1982 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Though SCIRI is happy to receive U.S. support as well (its turbaned leader recently visited the Oval Office), there is no question that the Shiite leaders in Iraq know that one day the United States will leave, while Iran, Iraq’s giant neighbor to the east, will always be there. Those realities seem not to have registered with Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, who told The Washington Post that even though SCIRI and Iran had close ties in the 1980s, “Now it’s a different situation, so there is a need for adaptation of what’s appropriate in terms of a relationship.” Perhaps, by invading the compound of SCIRI’s leader and seizing several officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard there last month, Khalilzad thought he was sending the “appropriate” message that SCIRI needs to break its ties to Iran. Not likely....."

Bigots and history


Neo-cons, orientalists and Zionists gathered recently in Israel to confirm their fantasies about history, people and politics

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

"The seventh annual Herzliya Conference, held in the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre, featured a rarefied blend of neo-conservatives and old-guard conservatives who have preserved their "unbounded vitality and eternal youthfulness", as one might hear in the plug for one of our video clip starlets these days. How it warmed the heart to see assembled together in a single conference such illustrious figures as the eternal orientalist Bernard Lewis, the permanently startled Shimon Peres, the notorious Richard Perle and, of the same clique, former CIA director James Woolsey.

Where else in the world could you come across these sorts of people and other leeches upon this part of the world underneath one roof? It could only be in Israel, of course, which has become one of the major centres for provoking the clash of civilisations and cultures, and for glorifying "Western civilisation", in which Israel so unreservedly situates itself, in spite of the "Third Worldness" and corruption that pervade its mass culture and the mindset of its politicians. Israel has made itself a forum for economic liberalism and the politics of globalisation (to be read as Americanisation), without self-criticism inside the conference hall and without demonstrations outside. Herzliya, after all, is not Vancouver where people are mad enough to protest against this type of conference. It is located on the most extreme and most extremist fringe of Western colonialist culture; it is, according to Zionism's self- definition, the West's "spearhead against Eastern barbarianism," as that Zionist hero, Osishkin, put it in order to win the British over to the Zionist enterprise......

The crusader state, in its heyday, succeeded marvellously in turning brother ruler against brother ruler and conquering its neighbouring statelets, even without the advantages of state-of-the-art technological superiority and nuclear might. Indeed, they used very much the same instruments of war that the Arabs had and they didn't even enjoy the degree of social and scientific advancement the Arabs had attained at the time. And they certainly didn't have to convene a Herzliya conference. Their ally was the fragmented structure of the surrounding statelets and their mutual rivalries and suspicions. These are the historical circumstances that we cite metaphorically in order to warn of the consequences of failing to build a nation founded upon the concept of citizenship.

Believe it or not, this metaphor is closer to present day realities than Bernard Lewis's theories. The Arabs have made some progress since the Middle Ages -- some considerable progress: Israel can't keep them down or even preserve itself without technological superiority and other forms of superiority, unlike the crusader state which lasted for some 200 years without these advantages. But the unresolved problem of nationalism, Israel, and the failure to build a democratic civil state are definitely among the foremost factors to have stalled this progress. Meanwhile, the folks at Herzliya have their own theories to expound on the Arab condition, because they approach it from a different mindset altogether.....

Apparently, Peres hadn't attended Lewis's lecture about how little the rest of the world cares about this part of the world and Islam's next encroachment into the West -- he seemed indifferent to that danger. Rather, the impression he left was that Israel did not want peace with Syria, that it was preparing for war against Iran and that the Palestinians had better be ready to accept much less than what was offered to them at Camp David II. On the latter point, he was explicit about what the Palestinians had to accept. Israel, he said, has no intention of letting demographic reasons end its existence as a Jewish state. It would not go the way of Lebanon, which ended as the only Christian state in the region due to the demographic price it paid for its mistakes. Israel, in other words, would never accept the principle of the Palestinian right to return; as to what "mistakes" the Lebanese made, these were left unsaid.

Yes, with or without Bernard Lewis, the analogy to Mameluke petit states is very useful in order to grasp the blindness of an Arab order that supported the occupation of Iraq, that has no idea what stance to take on the current process of partitioning Iraq and on the prospect of an increase in American forces there, and that has a strong inclination towards availing itself of any mechanism, including fuelling sectarian tensions, in order to keep its people mired in backwardness.

And the analogy is particularly apt when it comes to the Arab order's stance, or lack thereof, on the attempt to impose Israeli conditions on the Palestinians by means of economic blockade, while at the same time calling for a Palestinian unity government on the conditions set by the Quartet, without making any demands on Israel, as a preliminary for reviving a negotiating process aimed at securing Israel's conditions for a settlement. This is definitely an Arab order in a muddle and looking for a way out of the awkward and embarrassing position that the resolve, perseverance and skill of the Lebanese resistance have put it in.

True, Israel's military and technological superiority is essential to its survival. However, the gap between Israel and the Arabs is not so much created by its superiority as it is by the Arabs' backwardness. At the root of this backwardness lie the petit states in which, to borrow from Ibn Khaldun, flattery and favouritism are the way to rank and power, rank and power are the route to money, and alliance with Israel and any other power is the way to forestall the rise of any alternative."

Toll rises in Gaza clashes


Members of the Hamas armed wing take over a presidential guard armoured vehicle [AFP]

"Gun battles have erupted in the Gaza Strip between Hamas fighters and security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Six people were reported killed and at least 70 others wounded in the violence on Thursday afternoon that tested a three-day-old ceasefire.

Hamas said its fighters ambushed what it alleged was a convoy carrying weapons to Abbas's presidential guard in the Gaza Strip.

Residents said it was the fiercest fighting in the territory since the truce went into effect early on Tuesday.

The heavy clashes were taking place outside the main entrance of the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, security sources and witnesses said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh said the situation was deteriorating quickly and that people had closed their shops and gone home.

She said fierce fighting had been reported from the northern Gaza Strip and that a security compound had been razed.

Accusation

Also on Thursday, Hamas said that an "Arab country" had shipped weapons to the presidential guard which is loyal to the rival Fatah faction.

Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman, said: "A large cargo of weapons was transported yesterday."

He said the shipment passed into the Gaza Strip via Egypt through a crossing on the border between Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territory.

"These weapons are intended for the presidential guard and the Fatah putschists," Radwan charged.

"Military Jeeps and shells are among these weapons which come from an Arab country, whose name we do not wish to divulge," he added.

Fatah denied having received any such shipment.

Abdelhakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, said: "It's a slanderous accusation throwing water into the fire."

Burhan Hammad, the head of Egypt's Gaza-based security delegation, also similarly branded the allegations a "total lie" that he said intended to push bitter rivals Fatah and Hamas into an "arms race".

The two factions have been locked in a power struggle since Hamas formed a government last March after a landslide victory over Fatah at the polls."

الشاحنات القادمة إلى الرئاسة محملة بالسلاح من دولة خليجية


أنباء عن وقوع 6 قتلى وعشرات الجرحى
مصدر في "حماس": الشاحنات القادمة إلى الرئاسة محملة بالسلاح من دولة خليجية

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أكدت مصادر رفيعة المستوى في حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" أن المعركة التي جرت الخميس في غزة، ولا تزال مستمرة قرب معبر "كريم سالم"، نشبت بشأن شاحنات كانت محملة بالأسلحة في طريقها إلى حرس الرئاسة في الأراضي الفلسطينية.

ونفت هذه المصادر، التي طلبت عدم الكشف عن اسمها في تصريحات خاصة لوكالة "قدس برس"، نفياً قاطعاً أن تكون هذه الشاحنات محملة بالمواد الغذائية، مؤكدة أن "ما تحمله الشاحنات هو أسلحة متنوعة، قدمت من دولة عربية خليجية كبيرة، ومرت عبر القاهرة، قبل أن يحط رحالها في معبر كرم سالم، الواقع تحت الإشراف الصهيوني المباشر. واعترضت عناصر من حركة حماس هذه الشاحنات ونشبت معركة بينها وبين قوات الرئاسة".

وعبرت هذه المصادر المسؤولة عن استغرابها الشديد واستهجانها بأن تقوم دولة خليجية معروف عنها أنها متسامحة وليست إرهابية بدعم أمن الرئاسة وحركة فتح ضد حركة حماس، بما يذكي نيران الحرب الأهلية.

وأوضح المصدر أن هذه الكميات من الأسلحة أتت كجزء من الدعم الأمريكي الممنوح لحرس الرئاسة، نافياً أي علاقة لهذه الأسلحة بالمصريين، مشيراً إلى أن "مصر لا علاقة لها لا من قريب ولا من بعيد بهذه الكمية من الأسلحة، إلا أنها مرت عبر أراضيها".

وأكدت هذه المصادر أن عناصر القوة التنفيذية والحكومة لم ولن تسمح بمرور أسلحة إلى الداخل الفلسطيني من أجل تذكية الصراع، وقالت: "طبعاً نحن نؤكد مجدداً أننا لم ولن نسمح بمرور أسلحة إلى الداخل لتذكية الصراع، وكنا نتمنى من الأخوة في العالم العربي أن يكونوا عوناً لنا للاتفاق والتفاهم لا للاقتتال والتناحر".

وأوضحت هذه المصادر أن طبيعة هذه المعركة "لا علاقة لها بالاشتباكات التي كانت قائمة وانتهت مع توقيع اتفاق وقف إطلاق النار، وإنما هي ذات صلة بكمية الأسلحة القادمة إلى معبر كرم سالم من هذه الدولة الخليجية العربية".

وكانت الاشتباكات التي دارت قد أسفرت، بحسب بعض المصادر إلى مقتل ستة أشخاص وجرح نحو سبعين آخرين بجروح مختلفة، في حين تجري جهود حثيثة من أجل تطويق المواجهات.

بدوره؛ أكد ممثل حركة المقاومة الإسلامية حماس في لبنان، أسامة حمدان أن جهوداً سياسية كبرى تبذل الآن لتطويق الأزمة الناشبة بين حركة حماس وحرس الرئاسة.

وقال حمدان: "إن اجتماعات متواصلة تتم الآن لإنهاء هذه الأزمة، وتبذل حركة حماس بالتنسيق مع الطرف المصري جهوداً كبيرة، من أجل تهدئة الأوضاع والحفاظ على السلم الأهلي الحذر، الذي تشهده الأراضي الفلسطينية عقب التوقيع على اتفاق وقف إطلاق النار بين حركتي فتح وحماس".

ورفض حمدان الحديث عن أي تفاصيل عن فحوى المحادثات التي تجري الآن، لكنه قال إن "الخلاف الجاري حالياً ليس بين حركة فتح وحماس، بل هو بين حرس الرئاسة وحركة حماس، وجهودنا مستمرة ونأمل أن تكون النتائج إيحابية"."

Condoleezza's Birth Pangs In Gaza Intensifying


Gaza truce near collapse as four killed in clashes

".....In the central Gaza refugee camp Bureij, Hamas gunmen ambushed what the Islamic group alleged was a convoy carrying weapons from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, intended for the presidential guard.

Abbas's Fatah faction said the four-truck convoy, which set off from the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, was carrying medical equipment and tents, and accused Hamas of plunging a 3-day-old Palestinian ceasefire into "grave danger".

The ceasefire had largely stopped a surge in internal fighting in the territory in which at least 34 Palestinians had been killed.

A battle raged between Hamas gunmen and presidential guards accompanying the convoy, according to residents in the area.

"A real war is taking place, gunmen are using the heaviest arms they have," a witness said.

Sources in the governing Hamas movement said the trucks were carrying weapons for the 4,000-man presidential guard, a force loyal to Abbas and his Fatah faction.

"Hamas's heroes have commandeered arms shipments that came through Kerem Shalom as part of the fight against the Palestinian people," a presenter on a Hamas radio station said.

Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said the convoy was carrying generators, tents and medical equipment.

"There are no weapons at all," Abu Khoussa told the Reuters news agency, adding the ambush "represented a grave danger to the continuation of the (ceasefire) agreement"

Asked about the convoy's cargo, a Palestinian security official declined to comment. A senior Israeli official said she knew trucks had entered the Gaza Strip but did not know their contents.

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Hamas officials in two separate attacks early Thursday.

Early Thursday, unknown gunmen opened fire at Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum as he drove with three bodyguards in his white sedan toward an impromptu checkpoint near Gaza City, Hamas said. There were no casualties. A Hamas announcement blamed "coup-seekers," a reference to militants from the rival Fatah party.

"This is a violation of the [truce] agreement," Barhoum said. He reported the incident to Egyptian mediators and the gunmen removed their checkpoint, he said.

Later Thursday, gunmen in a car shot at Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for a Hamas militia, Shahwan said, blaming the shooting on Fatah-affiliated security officers. One Hamas member was wounded, he said....."

The destroyed center of Ramadi, in Anbar Province, the site Tuesday of some of the heaviest fighting between U.S. occupation forces and the Iraqi Resistance.

Latest Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll


The question is:

Will the Palestinian dialogue in Macca (S.A.) succeed in ending inter-Palestinian strife?

With over 1,800 responding so far, here is the breakdown:

Yes......40%

No.......60%

ESCAPING THE MAHDI GANG


UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs

IRAQ: More Palestinians flee Baghdad

"BAGHDAD, 1 Feb 2007 (IRIN) - The number of Palestinians stranded at the Iraq-Syria border has risen to 700 as more refugees flee the escalating violence in Baghdad, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

"Another 50 Palestinians have fled to the Iraq-Syrian border following a traumatic week in Baghdad, bringing the total number stranded at the frontier to about 700," Jennifer Pagonis, UNHCR spokeswoman, said at a press briefing in Geneva......

UNHCR said a group of 356 Palestinians has been in no-man's land between Iraq and Syria since May, and is living in a makeshift camp that was erected there. The second group of more recently arriving Palestinians, which now numbers around 340, is stuck in another improvised camp, al-Waleed, on the Iraqi side of the border.

Syrian authorities continue to deny access to all Palestinians, leaving them stranded in these camps, UNHCR added.

UNHCR is concerned that Palestinians have been systematically targetted and threatened by authorities and militias. The refugee agency said they face constant threats from death squads.

"More Palestinians are leaving Baghdad on a daily basis due to ongoing violence against them and they are heading to the borders where they are suffering a lot," Dhilal al-Kasous, the Palestinian Charge d'Affaires in Baghdad, told IRIN.

"They are living in tents in very dismal conditions during this cold weather season, and have no access to potable water and medicine. Their children have left schools and they will be an uneducated generation in the future," al-Kasous said.

He added that fewer than 15,000 Palestinians are now left in Baghdad where they do not venture out of their houses for fear of violent attacks by militia and harassment by Iraqi police.

On 16 January, Iraqi security forces broke into two buildings in Baghdad that are rented by UNHCR for Palestinian refugees and arrested 30 men. But they were released shortly.

In another incident in Baghdad's central district of al-Batawyen, Interior Ministry forces broke doors and windows of a building and arrested 17 Palestinian men. A third incident took place in al-Amin district in the eastern side of the capital on the same day and 13 Palestinian men were apprehended by Iraqi security forces.

"We again urge the international community, including neighbouring and resettlement countries, to help find a humane solution for these refugees who are persecuted inside Iraq and have nowhere to go," UNHCR said. "

Adapting to Global Warming?

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

The 'axis of fear' is born


A Good Article
By Pepe Escobar


"The Bush administration, in a sense, is getting what it wants in the wider Middle East. To battle a fictitious Shi'ite crescent (a construct by Jordan's King Abdullah), it has emboldened even more a reactionary Sunni crescent (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates), thus exacerbating to a paroxysm the "strategy" it has already applied in Iraq: sectarianism as the golden parameter of imperial divide and rule. Historically, Sunnis and Shi'ites have co-existed amid social tensions. But never have these tensions been so cynically exploited - by Washington - as in post-invasion Iraq and the wider Middle East.

The administration of US President George W Bush was forced to acknowledge that the monumental disaster of occupied Iraq had to be blamed on a new scapegoat. Thus the umpteenth twist in the "war on terror": exit al-Qaeda, enter Iran.

The Sunni Arab "axis of fear" is merrily playing along. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia even complained in a Kuwaiti newspaper that Iran is trying to convert Sunni Arabs to Shi'ism. Even Israel is now by all means allied with Saudi Arabia against Iran - Mecca/Jerusalem against Qom; Muslims and Jews battling Muslims.

It's enlightening to compare this development with how Iran's ambassador to Syria, Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, sees it - as nothing other than a replay of the British Empire's divide-and-rule. Washington is once again sowing the seeds of discord among Muslims: "Bush and his allies are in favor of further unrest, turmoil and crises so that they can justify deployment of their troops in the region."

Shi'ites also happen to live in the midst of the "axis of fear" - such as in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Beyond sectarianism, Arab popular perception is alert enough to identify this for what it is: a war of the US - supported by dictatorial Arab regimes - against Islam. And the target is not only Iran: the Saudi/Israeli link is also anti-Hamas - an obvious point as the House of Saud is little else than an annex of Washington.

A recent survey of Arab public opinion by the British YouGov group revealed that Israel (88%) is the "greatest threat to the security and future" of the Middle East, followed by the US, al-Qaeda and finally Iran (33%). This has not prevented the bulk of Arab mainstream media from engaging in a systematic anti-Iranian propaganda wave.

But as Iran strives to position itself in practice as the key supporter of the Palestinian national-liberation movement, it is bound to solidify its pre-eminent popular role in the Middle East. Washington, once again, will not be amused.

Patriot games
As even the mineral kingdom is aware, the Bush administration's war on Iran is already on. Escalation and provocation are fast reaching fever pitch. This includes:
* The - bogus - White House claim that Iranian "networks" are helping to target US troops in Iraq.
* An imminent Bush administration-peddled dossier detailing alleged Iranian "subversion" in Iraq, which is bound to include the surrealistic notion of Iranian "agents" collaborating with the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) in an anti-American orgy.
* US Special Forces destabilizing Iran on the ground (especially in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan provinces).
* United Nations sanctions.
* The blacklisting of Iranian state-owned Bank Sepah.
* The deployment to Israel and Gulf states of defensive Patriot missiles (theoretically to shoot down any retaliatory, incoming Iranian Shihab-3 missiles).
* The deployment toward the Gulf of the USS John C Stennis nuclear strike force plus the USS Eisenhower nuclear strike force - in practice two huge floating airports accompanied by guided-missile cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and submarine escorts and loaded with a deluge of missiles and helicopters. In the event the Nimitz strike force - currently in San Diego - also heads to the Middle East, the attack on Iran will be a certainty.

And there is the non-stop disinformation avalanche. As in 2002, pre-shock and awe, where the focus was shifted from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, in the 2007 remix (with a nuclear twist) the focus is being moved from the quagmire in Iraq to the Iranian "threat".

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies has joined the fray, insisting Iran "could" be only two years away from building a nuclear bomb. This curiously ties with Likud supremo Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Iran is "1,000 days away" from going nuclear. CNN and Fox News are mercilessly slugging it out to get prime Pentagon handouts - the best ringside view to watch the next war.

Meanwhile in Tehran, everything hinges on a crucial decision to be made by the nationalist theocracy's leadership. What path to choose: cooperation with the US, or confrontation? President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his faction favor confrontation. Hashemi Rafsanjani, in practice the regime's No 2, favors cooperation (as does a crucial player, reformist Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri). Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei has taken steps to isolate Ahmadinejad. But it may be too late: whatever the path chosen, the Bush administration is already on a war footing. Options abound.

As under the new White House-defined rules the guerrillas in Iraq are now led by Iran and not al-Qaeda, Iran can be attacked with no further authorization. The crucial missing piece is how to fabricate the new (Persian) Gulf of Tonkin incident, as in 1964 when Vietnamese naval vessels attacked US destroyers, setting in motion the impetus toward the Vietnam War.

Pray and then I'll kill you
The US-stoked Sunni-Shi'ite divide had to involve oil. Saudi Arabia is directly confronting Iran inside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Traders take for granted that the Bush administration is once again allied with the House of Saud. Iran wants oil to be sold for at least US$70 a barrel. Saudi Oil Minister Ibrahim al-Naimi, on the other hand, keeps repeating that oil prices are going "in the right direction", ie down.

The US/Saudi nexus pulls no punches to squeeze Iran economically (fewer oil sales, less hard currency, mounting problems for Ahmadinejad, whose notoriously incompetent administration has not managed a better distribution of Iran's oil revenues). To top it off, to extract a barrel of oil Saudi Arabia may spend as little as $2. Iran, on the other hand, may spend as much as $18. And it will get worse. Iran is barred from buying the best exploration and drilling equipment, which is basically made in North America.

No wonder Tehran is proceeding with extreme caution - while bracing for a possible attack. Diplomatically, Tehran has invited International Atomic Energy Agency scientists and diplomats from the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 and the Arab League to visit Iran's nuclear sites. Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator, went to Saudi Arabia and personally talked to King Abdullah - conveying the Supreme Leader's offer of Iranian help to stabilize Iraq. But this won't be enough to appease Bush.

Bush's green light for the assassination of Iranians inside Iraq has been no less than absurd - apart from being illegal. The majority of Iranians in Iraq are pilgrims, who go predominantly to the holy sites in Najaf and Karbala (Iran is actually financing the construction of an airport in Najaf). Anyone now can dub the pilgrims "spies" or "terrorists" or worse, and engage in targeted assassinations. What Iranian agents do is sell mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades to Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commanders. The Mehdi Army is not killing Americans - at least not yet.

American casualties are not produced by Shi'ite pilgrims. The killers are Sunni Arabs - from al-Anbar province to Salahuddin, from Mosul to western Baghdad. These Sunni Arab killers are sponsored by none other than wealthy individuals living in the "axis of fear" - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates. Of more than 10,000 prisoners in US jails in Iraq, the majority of foreigners are Saudis, followed by Jordanians. There are practically no Iranians.

In a January 19 interview with the Arab satellite channel al-Manar, Hezbollah secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah sharply analyzed how Lebanonization is linked to Iraqification and to the larger Sunni-Shi'ite divide in the Middle East. It all has to do, of course, with Bush's "New Middle East".

In Nasrallah's view, "In short, the 'New Middle East' signifies a collection of statelets that are divided along religious, sectarian and racial lines from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia and Yemen and the rest of the Gulf states, reaching North Africa. And here ... I would like to warn everyone in the Arab and Islamic world, whichever sect or religion they identify with, whether they be Muslim or Christian, Shi'ite or Sunni or Druze, whichever race they belong to, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, etc ... Whoever believes that the 'New Middle East' will grant him his own independent state, that may be the case, but they should not ignore that a founding pillar of the 'New Middle East' is continuous conflict between these statelets."

Reality proves it. The Bush administration thrives on chaos - internal sectarianism and state-to-state sectarianism. It orders an Iraqi client regime (the Nuri al-Maliki government) to kill Sunni Arabs (or nationalist Shi'ites, such as the Sadrists). It orders a supplicant client in Palestine (Mahmoud Abbas) to kill people from Hamas. It orders a client regime in Lebanon (the Fouad Siniora government) to kill people from Hezbollah. This is what Washington calls "democracy". Compare it with the fact that Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas and Ahmadinejad are the three most popular Muslim leaders among the Egyptian masses.

If "Sunni solidarity" were something more than a meaningless slogan in the war for the soul of Islam, the "axis of fear" would have had to support the Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq to drive out the US. They could never have summoned the courage, of course - unlike their populations - so they fabricated the threat of a "Shi'ite crescent". The US is more than comfortable attributing to hardcore Sunni Saudi Arabia the role of key "axis of fear" player in the war of the US against Shi'ite Iran. Taliban-friendly Pakistan may soon join.

The fact that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan fabricate "terrorists" in industrial quantities is a minor detail. What matters now for the Bush administration is yet another wild bunch of even more evil "terrorists" who threaten "civilization" with (non-existent) nuclear weapons.

Should a mini-September 11, 2001, come, the US will blame it on Iran. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress will have to say "yes" to US bombs. And meanwhile, Muslims will be killing Muslims all over the Middle East for the United States' greater benefit. "