Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

Interesting article from Telegraph to-day:

Benjamin Netanyahu had offered a compromise on settlement building Photo: AP

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had offered to extend a partial freeze on Jewish building in the West Bank, but only in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Within minutes of the proposal being made public, Palestinian officials had rejected it out of hand.

===================================

The offer will be seen by some observers as unrealistic from the outset.

The Palestinian Authority, while acknowledging Israel's right to exist, has long resisted calls to recognise it as a Jewish state, saying such a move would discriminate against Israel's large Arab minority and prejudice negotiations over the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees.

The stand-off leaves the prospect of a resolution to the settlement row looking as remote as ever.

Peace negotiations have quickly foundered after Israel declined to prolong the partial settlement freeze, which expired in the last week of September.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, has threatened to abandon the talks if settlement construction is not halted again, although he agreed last week to give the United States a month to find ways of resolving the impasse.

An Israeli government official said that Palestinians had to show a willingness to compromise in order to salvage the talks.

"The process will only work if it is a two-way street," he said. "It can't just be that the Palestinians make demands and the Israelis make concessions."

In an effort to break the impasse, the United States has offered Israel financial, political and security guarantees if it agrees to a one-off extension of the moratorium by two months.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials say they could reverse history by seeking to have the West Bank placed under international trusteeship if the peace talks fail as a last resort.

The suggestion, which would see a return of foreign administration in the Holy Land for the first time since the British mandate of Palestine expired in 1948, is unlikely to win international support.

If you want to boycott Israeli products then don't buy goods with barcodes beginning 729.

There are Israeli goods without this, but 729 is always Israel.

If you see any products labelled as Produce of West Bank these are from illegal settlements farmed on stolen land. Very little Palestinian goods labelled in that way are sold in UK supermarkets. Many settlements are also illegally labelling their goods as made in Israel. This is illegal under EU law due to beneficial tax arrangements.

Tesco sell quite a few products labelled that way as does Waitrose (some herbs and fruit for instance).

What the TUC and UK trade unions are doing

Calling on the UK government to seek EU agreement to impose a ban on the importing of goods produced in the illegal settlements;

Urging supermarkets not to stock such goods, or failing that, to label them accurately;

Pressing the UK government to work with the EU and supermarkets to ensure that goods are accurately labelled.

Supporting moves to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement which provides preferential trade facilities to Israel.

British government policy

The website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office states that The government has been clear that settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal.

UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465 deplore the building of settlements on Palestinian land and instruct member states not to assist with the building of settlements.

The Geneva Convention states that the transfer of a civilian population into occupied territory is a war crime; to be ancillary to this crime is also a crime in English law.

perhaps you should also boycott buying from the swathe of companies who source their merchandise in 3rd world countries where child labour is used in squalid semi-slavery conditions ..... i say support our own illegals and buy british, especially whatever is made in the sweatshops of bradford!

The only good boycott is a Geoffrey.
The only good haystack is a Monet.
Approach haystack only if you have Imovax.

A former British ambassador, Lord Wright, has called for annulling all military agreements between the EU and Israel because of the latters illegal settlement construction.

Former British Ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia Lord Wright in an article published Friday condemned Israels continued engagement in illegal settlement activity in Palestinian land.

He said ongoing settlement activity will result in serious repercussions. If Israel proceeds to construct Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, there is no doubt that they will pose a genuine threat to peace in the entire Mideast region.

In the same context, the article recalled that the Israeli government agreed last year to build a number of housing units for Zionist settlers, asserting that the activity is absolutely illegal.

Lord Wright called on the EU to place a ban on exporting arms to Israel if it does not suspend settlement activity and its policy of deporting Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

What more can be said..??????

By Alan Hart

Better late than never, a very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, found the right way to challenge Israel and the U.S. As reported by AFP on 13 October, he said, We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise.
Thats a completely logical and totally reasonable demand.
IF Israel was interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, the map provided would show Israel with borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war. An accompanying note would say that, subject to agreement in final negotiations, Israel seeks minor border adjustments here and there. The note would also propose that Jerusalem should be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.
If such a map with the note as above was presented, it would open the door to peace.
But the implementation of such land-for-peace deal would require the IDF to confront and forcibly remove illegal Jewish settlers who refused to leave; and that would open the door to a Jewish civil war the price Israels Jews would have to pay for 62 years of contempt for and defiance of international law.
Of course it wont happen. As I reveal in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jewswww.claritypress.com), why not was explained to me as far back as I980 by Shimon Peres. At the time he was the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition to Prime Minister Menachem Begins Likud-led coalition. Peres was hoping to win Israels next election and deny Begin a second term in office. (President Carter was hoping and possibly praying for such an outcome). My purpose in talking with Peres in private was to establish whether or not he was interested in me acting as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between himself and PLO Chairman Arafat. Peres was interested but before I went off to Beirut to seek Arafats agreement to participate in a little conspiracy for peace, he said to me, I fear its already too late. (
I asked Peres what he meant and this was his answer:
Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what hes doing. Hes stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jews out of the West Bank. Pause. Im not.
When Peres spoke those words to me there were 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank. If it was too late then, in 1980, how much more too late is it today when the number of illegal Jewish settlers is in excess of 500,000 and rising on a daily basis?
Some weeks after that conversation with Peres, I had reason to talk in private with Ezer Weizman, then serving as Defense Minister in Begins first-term government. He gave me extraordinary and frightening insight into why any future Israeli prime minister would not and possibly could not order the IDF to remove settlers from the West Bank by whatever force was necessary. At a point in our conversation he said the following, very slowly and with quiet emphasis:
This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed in blood an oath which commits them to join with the settlers and fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank. Pause. I know thats what happened at the meeting because Ive checked it out and thats why I was late for this appointment with you. (I tell the full story of this conversation with Weizman in The Blood Oath, Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).
So no, there wont be a Jewish civil war because no Israeli prime minister is ever going to risk provoking it.
So there will be no map. (I mean not one that could come even close to satisfying the Palestinian demand and need). Yasser Abed Rabbo knew that when he put the demand into words.
So what was the point of his challenge?
I presume he was hoping that Israels refusal to come up with a map based on more or less pre-June 1967 borders will help to convince more and more people, Americans especially, that Israel simply is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and for which there is universal support (minus only the opposition of the Zionists and the mad, fundamentalist Christians who support them right or wrong, an opposition which in numbers of people is only a tiny, almost invisible fraction of the global whole).
If it does that, the challenge will not have been made in vain.
Footnote:
The day after Yasser Abed Rabbo issued the challenge, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had the gall (chutzpah) to say that Israel has already made many gestures to the Palestinian Authority to facilitate restarting direct negotiations, and now the other side must show goodwill. In one sense Liberman was right. Israel has made many gestures to the Palestinians. But all of them have been of the Go to hell type.
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.
His Latest book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is a three-volume epic in its American edition. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor.

What The Zionist Jews Did To Germany?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw2FhXZ9tiw

Fahel,

I think that the article by Alan Hart is very thought provoking.

I am not certain of the factual bases for it, although to me they seem plausible.


I think the basic proposal or challenge should be placed before the United Nations for consideration.

If the Israeli administration is genuine in their search for peace, then they would seriously consider such a proposal.

A Jewish rabbi has allowed the use of unarmed Palestinian civilians as human shields even if they were killed in the process.

Yitzhak Shapira, a director of a Jewish school in the occupied West Bank, told Haaretz daily published on Thursday that anything could be used in order to save the lives of Jews according to the Tora teaching.

He said that the life of a Jew is much more precious than that of anyone else whether he is a soldier or not.

No Israeli should endanger his life for the sake of a non-Jew even if he/she was a civilian, Shapira said.

Charming.

perhaps a few innocent PIs who get stuffed by the markets is a similar analogy

Gaza's been arrested for drugs offences!

Tania Kassis - Jerusalem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baNGaZpb_Ss&feature=player_embedded#!

CBS -60 minutes marks the end of two state solution

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/60-minutes-marks-the-end-of-the-two-state-solution.html

This seems to resonate what is happening in the ME.

Borrowed quote from Our Oriental Heritage' by Will Durant 1935

"Time sanctified everything; even the most arrant theft, in the hands of the robber's grandchildren, becomes sacred and inviolable property."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11672335

Israel abused Palestinian detainees, say rights group

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.

Israel's internal security service subjected Palestinians to abuse and torture while in custody, according to a report by two Israeli rights groups.

A report by B'Tselem and Hamoked said Israeli agents bound detainees to chairs during lengthy interrogations and insulted, threatened or hit them.

The report is based on interviews with 121 Palestinians held in the Petah Tikva detention centre in 2009.

Israel's Justice Ministry has denied the claims, saying it respects the law.

In a written response to the report's authors, the ministry denied many of the charges, saying interrogations were "conducted according to law in order to prevent illegal activity that would harm state security".

I think the IJM, like the administration is blind in both eyes.

They are aware of infringements of their own "rights" but not those of others.

why don't you two (fred and hayseed) just phone each other to discuss the unfairness of life especially in gaza? ..... no one else seems much interested

btw, did you register that donkey prices in gaza have plummeted 70% since the influx of cheap chinese tuk-tuks through the hamas cash-cow smuggling tunnels from egypt ..... promise it's true

Cynic,

You don't have register your protest.

But, it is interesting how you pop up when anything slightly critical of Israel's actions is written.

If you are not interested in the thread, pass it bye on the other side of the road.

Cynic,

You don't have register your protest.

But, it is interesting how you pop up when anything slightly critical of Israel's actions is written.

If you are not interested in the thread, pass it bye on the other side of the road.