http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25132544.htm
Lebanon army receives U.S. ammunition supplies
25 May 2007 08:43:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
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More BEIRUT, May 25 (Reuters) - Lebanon received supplies of U.S. ammunition on Friday, security sources said, as the Lebanese army battles Islamist militants in the north of the country.

The Lebanese government had requested more military aid from Washington after the eruption of fighting between the army and Fatah al-Islam militant group this week.

Three military supply planes arrived at Beirut airport overnight, witnesses said.

Security sources said the United States had notified the army that the supplies would be arriving after the start of the fighting, Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The supplies had been agreed between the Lebanese government and the U.S. administration during a visit to Washington by Lebanese Defence Minister Elias al-Murr earlier this year, the sources said.

The United States has voiced support for the government in its battle with the militants at the Nahr al-Bared camp, calling Fatah al-Islam "a brutal group of violent extremists".

At least 25 militants and 33 soldiers have been killed in the clashes, security sources say. Lebanon says between 50 and 60 militants have been killed.

Palestinian sources say at least 11 civilians have been killed and 100 wounded in the camp. But Palestinians who have fled since a fragile truce took hold on Tuesday put the civilian death toll in the dozens.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Hersh_Bush_arranged_support_for_militants_0522.html
Hersh: Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday May 22, 2007

In an interview on CNN International's Your World Today, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explains that the current violence in Lebanon is the result of an attempt by the Lebanese government to crack down on a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, that it formerly supported.

Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.

A key element of this policy shift was an agreement among Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, whereby the Saudis would covertly fund the Sunni Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon as a counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah.

Hersh points out that the current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980's – which gave rise to al Qaeda – with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the "same pattern" of the US using jihadists that the Saudis assure us they can control.

When asked why the administration would be acting in a way that appears to run counter to US interests, Hersh says that, since the Israelis lost to them last summer, "the fear of Hezbollah in Washington, particularly in the White House, is acute."

As a result, Hersh implies, the Bush administration is no longer acting rationally in its policy. "We're in the business of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia. ... "We're in the business of creating ... sectarian violence." And he describes the scheme of funding Fatah al-Islam as "a covert program we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shia world, and it just simply -- it bit us in the rear."

HALA GORANI: Well, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported back in March that in order to defeate Hezbollah, the Lebanese government supported a Sunni militant group, the same ones they're fighting today. Seymour joins us live from Washington. Thanks for being with us. What is the source of the financing according to your reporting on these groups, such as Fatah al-Islam in these camps of Nahr el Bared, for instance? Where are they getting the money and where are they getting the arms?

SEYMOUR HERSH: The key player is the Saudis. What I was writing about was sort of a private agreement that was made between the White House, we're talking about Richard -- Dick -- Cheney and Elliott Abrams, one of the key aides in the White House, with Bandar. And the idea was to get support, covert support from the Saudis, to support various hard-line jihadists, Sunni groups, particularly in Lebanon, who would be seen in case of an actual confrontation with Hezbollah -- the Shia group in the southern Lebanon -- would be seen as an asset, as simple as that.

GORANI: The Senora government, in order to counter the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon would be covertly according to your reporting funding groups like Fatah al-Islam that they're having issues with right now?

HERSH: Unintended consequences once again, yes.

GORANI: And so if Saudi Arabia and the Senora government are doing this, whether it's unintended or not, therefore it has the United States must have something to say about it or not?

HERSH: Well, the United States was deeply involved. This was a covert operation that Bandar ran with us. Don't forget, if you remember, you know, we got into the war in Afghanistan with supporting Osama bin Laden, the mujahadin back in the late 1980s with Bandar and with people like Elliott Abrams around, the idea being that the Saudis promised us they could control -- they could control the jihadists so we spent a lot of money and time, the United States in the late 1980s using and supporting the jihadists to help us beat the Russians in Afghanistan and they turned on us. And we have the same pattern, not as if there's any lessons learned. It's the same pattern, using the Saudis again to support jihadists, Saudis assuring us they can control these various group, the groups like the one that is in contact right now in Tripoli with the government.

GORANI: Sure, but the mujahadin in the '80s was one era. Why would it be in the best interest of the United States of America right now to indirectly even if it is indirect empower these jihadi movements that are extremists that fight to the death in these Palestinian camps? Doesn't it go against the interests not only of the Senora government but also of America and Lebanon now?

HERSH: The enemy of our enemy is our friend, much as the jihadist groups in Lebanon were also there to go after Nasrullah. Hezbollah, if you remember, last year defeated Israel, whether the Israelis want to acknowledge it, so you have in Hezbollah, a major threat to the American -- look, the American role is very simple. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has been very articulate about it. We're in the business now of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia, against the Shia in Iran, against the Shia in Lebanon, that is Nasrullah. Civil war. We're in a business of creating in some places, Lebanon in particular, a sectarian violence.

GORANI: The Bush administration, of course, officials would disagree with that, so would the Senora government, openly pointing the finger at Syria, saying this is an offshoot of a Syrian group, Fatah al-Islam is, where else would it get its arms from if not Syria.

HERSH: You have to answer this question. If that's true, Syria which is close -- and criticized greatly by the Bush administration for being very close -- to Hezbollah would also be supporting groups, Salafist groups -- the logic breaks down. What it is simply is a covert program we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shia, the Shia world, and it bit us in the rear, as it's happened before.

GORANI: Sure, but if it doesn't make any sense for the Syrians to support them, why would it make any sense for the U.S. to indirectly, of course, to support, according to your reporting, by giving a billion dollars in aid, part of it military, to the Senora government -- and if that is dispensed in a way that that government and the U.S. is not controlling extremist groups, then indirectly the United States, according to the article you wrote, would be supporting them. So why would it be in their best interest and what should it do according to the people you've spoken to?

HERSH: You're assuming logic by the United States government. That's okay. We'll forget that one right now. Basically it's very simple. These groups are seeing -- when I was in Beirut doing interviews, I talked to officials who acknowledged the reason they were tolerating the radical jihadist groups was because they were seen as a protection against Hezbollah. The fear of Hezbollah in Washington, particularly in the White House, is acute. They just simply believe that Hassan Nasrallah is intent on waging war in America. Whether it's true or not is another question. There is a supreme overwhelming fear of Hezbollah and we do not want Hezbollah to play an active role in the government in Lebanon and that's been our policy, basically, which is support the Senora government, despite its weakness against the coalition. Not only Senora but Mr. Ahun, former military leader of Lebanon. There in a coalition that we absolutely abhor.

GORANI: All right, Seymour Hersh of "The New Yorker" magazine, thanks for joining us there and hopefully we'll be able to speak a little bit in a few months' time when those developments take shape in Lebanon and we know more. Thanks very much.

HERSH: glad to talk to you.

( this one is chilling ) Torture of children and the Bush administration: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm

( Another bomb shell! ) Hersh: Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon
(Look below for the report of America now sending Lebanon ammunition for the supression of this group!)
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Hersh_Bush_arranged_support_for_militants_0522.html
Lebanon army receives U.S. ammunition supplies
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25132544.htm

http://www.amin.org/look/amin/en.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrArticle=40580&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3
1 May 2007
Enough is enough, let's bring UN forces to Palestine
By: Dr. Salim Nazzal

The bloody clashes which have continued to erupt in Gaza between the two major Palestinian parties, Fateh and Hamas, must alert Palestinian society to the dangers which lay ahead. Theoretically, in conflict situations a divided society will use legal institutions to find a compromise between the divided parties. If these institutions fail to find a solution, the possibility of civil conflict increases. This is, in short, the story of most, if not all, of the civil conflicts which have occurred in modern history. Even if there are common characteristics to all civil conflicts, though, each society is different and thus the approach towards finding solutions can be different. The internal conflict in Palestine, apart from the principal factor of the Israeli occupation, is too complicated in many ways for this approach alone to be effective; it has been caused by a combination of several factors, which led in the end to the explosion of violence which took place in the streets of Gaza last week. And since nobody expects a miracle to remedy this situation, Palestinians now need, more than at any time in the past, to review their approach towards ending it.

The important question which should be answered is whether Palestinians should continue following the Oslo accord, without the hope of attaining its promised end result; full independence within the 1967 borders. The Oslo accord was meant, in any case, to be an interim agreement, rather than continuing to the present day. In the current situation, Palestinians are in the position of a man who is lowered into a well having been told that it's full of treasure, but who finds once he's in there that he's left dangling helplessly in the middle of the well, equally unable to reach the bottom or to climb back out . Palestinians, therefore, must not allow themselves to remain in this exposed position because it has led to them being suspended in a sort of limbo between the sky and the earth. They need to break this status quo in order to find a way out of this impasse.

It does not take much intelligence or observation to conclude that Israel is the better-off party from this deal, or that Israel spares no effort in portraying Palestinians in as negative a light as possible whenever it can. Israel deals with Palestine as an independent country on the issues which serve Israel's interests (such as escaping the responsibilities of the occupying force as stated in the Geneva Convention) while dealing with it as an occupied land whenever expedient in other matters (such as when it's annexing or invading Palestinian land). Palestinians' primary effort in the forthcoming period, therefore, must be to find a way to end this state of affairs, since it is now all-too-apparent that the continuation of this situation will mean the continuation of the inter-Palestinian conflict. Consequently, a brave political step is needed in the face of Israel and of the Western world, which carries part of the responsibility. For the time being, Palestinians are living not only with increased Israeli air strikes, but under the fire of the local militias' violence, which has been fed by the long years of frustration, siege and brutality under the barbaric Israeli occupation. To find a way to escape the two sources of fire, Palestinian leaders must send a clear message to the world community that they need to be protected from the Israeli killing machine. Palestinians must make it clear that enough is enough. They must make it clear that Palestinians can not afford to be the exception to all the nations which were helped by the international community to be independent and free, while they alone have been left in a cycle of endless, fruitless negotiations. In recent history we have seen nations which received protection; Bosnia were freed from Serbia and East Timor was freed from Indonesia. Therefore Palestinians need seriously to consider dissolving the Palestinian authority and calling for a UN mandate over Palestine.

Israel, known for its historical hostility to the UN, would likely reject any such proposal because the UN's presence in Palestine would mean that Israel policy of stealing Palestinian land and its casual murder of Palestinians would be restricted. Should Israel reject the UN presence, Palestinians would have a strong political weapon demonstrating very clearly Israel's status as a state apparently above international law. More than that, the Palestine question would finally return to the UN from which it began, which would give Palestinians more opportunity to press Israel to honour the two major UN resolutions which gives Palestinians the right to an independent state and the Palestinian refugees the right to repatriation. It would be not an easy way to go but it would redefine the Palestinian movement and restore the position which Palestine had in the previous decades, of a nation struggling against a ruthless occupation in defiance of the world community.

* The author is a Palestinian Norwegian historian and political analyst. He can be contacted at: gibran44@hotmail.com

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=22054
Ethnic cleansing must never be allowed to win - By Khalid Amayreh
Date: 15 / 05 / 2007 Time: 15:32

President Husni Mubarak of Egypt reportedly told visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently that “no Arab leader would dare give up the right of return,” for Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes when Israel was created in 1948.

Mubarak’s words, which must have irked Livni, were a significant assertion of the central importance of the refugee plight, the heart and soul of the Palestinian problem.

Moreover, Mubarak’s remarks seem also to reflect a growing trend among Palestinians and their Arab, Muslim and international allies to accentuate the right of return and never allow Zionist circles to dilute or downplay its paramount importance.

The right of return remains the heart and soul of the Palestinian question, despite the passage of 60 years since ethnic East European Ashkenazi supremacists massacred and terrorized the bulk of the native Palestinians to flee for their lives.

Today, Israel, in concert with its guardian ally, the United States, continues to reject the concept of repatriation of the Palestinian refugees to their former homes and villages in what is now Israel.

To rationalize this essentially racist discourse, Israeli and Zionist apologists present four main arguments, which are as unethical as they are mendacious.

They claim that the bulk of the refugees were not expelled but left voluntarily and that some of them were asked to leave by the Arab leaders of that era. Well, the truth of the matter, as recognized by a growing number of Israeli historians and leaders, including former cabinet ministers; is that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israel was carried out according to a well-devised plan prepared by the Zionist leadership.

But even if some Palestinians had left because they feared for their safety and the safety of their families, would it mean that they didn't have the right to return home when the dust of war settled?

The rule of international law is very clear on this. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948, states in its Article 13 that, “Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own and to return his country.”

The second argument cited by the Zionists in this regard is that the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and villages in what is now Israel would undermine the Jewish identity of Israel.

This is a purely racist argument because the right of a refugee to return to his home overrides Israel’s alleged “right” to religious and ethnic purity.

Besides, Israel has no more right to be racist, e.g. exclusively Jewish, than Apartheid South Africa had the right to be exclusively or predominantly white.

Indeed, the absurdity of this argument becomes especially relevant when we remember that maintaining Israel’s Jewish identity is only a euphemism for having the right to discriminate against non-Jews by denying them their human and civil rights.

In short, this an inherently racist attitude that reminds us of the Aryan supremacy that triggered the Second World War, which destroyed much of the world and caused the death of tens of millions of human beings.

The third argument voiced by Zionists, especially these days, is that hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were uprooted from the Arab world and that Arabs have to deal with their refugees as Jews have dealt with theirs.

Of course, this is transparent mendacity to say the least. The Jews of the Arab world who left their native Arab countries following the creation of Israel were actually bullied, terrorized and invited by Israel to make Aliya (immigration) to Palestine.

They were not expelled and their arrival in Israel was the ultimate fulfillment of Zionism. Well, isn’t bringing all the Jews of the world to Palestine Zionism’s ultimate goal and raison d'étre?

Hence, the equation of bringing Jewish immigrants into Palestine to live on land that belongs to the Palestinian people with the violent uprooting and expulsion of an entire people from their homes goes beyond the pale of acceptable logic. It is very much like fornicating with language.

Finally, some Israeli and Zionist leaders are trying to outsmart themselves by arguing that only those Palestinians who had lived in Palestine prior to 1948 had the right to return home, but not their descendants. In other words, those refugees who are over sixty years old?

Well, what kind of logic is this? Even the Nazis didn’t stoop to this level of intellectual depravity and dishonesty?

In brief, the right of return for Palestinian refugees is a sacred right that should never ever be compromised or dealt with lightly. Nor should it be subject to controversy and dispute just as the rightful owner’s right to recover his or her stolen property from a thief is not subject to dispute and controversy. More to the point, the passage of sixty years must never be allowed to erode or undermine that right.

Sixty years of homelessness, pain and dispersion in the four corners of the globe should be enough for these miserable victims of Zionist supremacy. Ending this obscene and sinister nightmare wouldn’t be an act of charity to the Palestinians. It would be a belated application of UN resolution 194, which calls for the repatriation of the refugees.

Finally, it is imperative to point out that those Palestinian “leaders” who from time to time make stupid remarks suggesting “flexibility” on the right of return are actually indulging in the moral equivalent of national treason, knowingly or unknowingly.

After all, who gave them the right to speak on behalf of the refugees who are scattered all over the globe?

If they want to appease their Zionist bankrollers, let them do it at their own expense, not at the refugees’ expense.

After all, by what logic do the purported descendants of Jews who allegedly left Palestine more than 2,000 years have the right to “return” to Palestine, whereas the true natives of the land who still retain the keys to their homes, from which they were expelled at gunpoint sixty years ago, are robbed of the right to return to their homes?

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=22054